NEW  AMSTERDAM 
AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Avery  Architectural  and  Fine  Arts  Library 
Gift  of  Seymour  B.  Durst  Old  York  Library 


iEx  ICtbrtH 


SEYMOUR  DURST 


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NEW  AMSTERDAM 
AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


NEW  AMSTERDAM 

AND 

ITS  PEOPLE 

Studies,  Social  and  Topographical,  of  the  Town 
under  Dutch  and  Early  English  Rule 

BY 

J.  H.  INNES 


WITH    MAPS,  PLANS,  VIEWS,  ETC. 


Maar  gij,  6  wel,  en  alder-heerlijkst-Land, 
Weest  dankbaar,  an  des  milden  Gevers  hand. 
Die  u  als  in  een  Lust-hof  heeft  geplant. 

Die  gij  u  kind'ren 
Meugt  laten  tot  een  Eeuwig-eygendom, 
Tot  dat  het  Zaad  der  Vrouwe  wederom 
Verschijn  :  tot  ons  verlossing  :  Wellekom! 

Wie  zal  't  hem  hind'ren? 

Jacob  Steendam 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S 
1902 


SONS 


r 


Copyright,  IQ02, 
By  Charles  Scribner's  Sons 

Published,  October,  1902 


UNIVERSITY  PRESS  •  JOHN  WILSON 
AND  SON  •  CAMBRIDGE,  U.  S.  A. 


PREFACE 


IT  is  perhaps  unfortunate,  in  some  respects,  that  Washing- 
ton Irving  chose  to  employ  his  great  talents  in  writing 
the  amusing  "  Knickerbocker  History "  of  New  York.  A 
burlesque  history  of  New  York  does  not  seem  to  be  called 
for  per  se,  any  more  than  a  burlesque  history  of  the  Plymouth 
Colony,  and  the  presentation  of  a  fictitious  type  of  the  colo- 
nists of  the  former  is  calculated  to  work  the  same  sort  of 
inconveniences  as  would  the  selection,  for  example,  of  Colonel 
Pride  or  of  Praise-God  Barebones  as  a  type  of  the  latter. 
Readers  of  such  works  are  supposed,  it  is  true,  to  bear  in 
mind  the  fact  that  they  are  considering  the  humorous  descrip- 
tions of  non-existent  characters  ;  but  when  for  any  reason 
the  work  becomes  almost  a  classic,  as  it  were,  of  the  literature 
of  the  country,  the  type  therein  portrayed  passes  insensibly 
in  the  popular  mind  into  something  like  the  embodiment  of 
truth. 

The  superficial  American  who  travels  in  England,  or  the 
superficial  Englishman  who  travels  in  America,  when  he 
writes  a  book  about  his  travels,  is  apt  to  set  forth  the  few 
people  he  has  chanced  to  meet  as  representatives  of  national 
types  of  character.  Both  of  these  worthies  are  even  more 
prone  to  do  the  same  thing  when  they  travel  in  a  foreign 
country  with  the  tongue  of  which  they  are  of  necessity  but 
imperfectly  acquainted,  but  in  such  cases  their  performances 
usually  fall  beneath  the  dignity  of  criticism. 

No  community,  however,  can  be  rightly  judged  in  this 
manner,  for  in  each  one  are  to  be  found  traits  of  character 
almost  as  diverse  and  distinct  as  are  the  individuals  who 
compose  it.    New  York  is  no  exception  to  this  rule.  Within 


vi 


PREFACE 


the  period  of  the  first  thirty  or  forty  years  of  the  colonization 
of  New  Amsterdam  there  are  to  be  met  with,  in  the  town, 
representatives  of  every  country  of  Europe  west  of  the  line  of 
the  Slavonic  peoples.  The  Dutch,  of  course,  greatly  predom- 
inated, but  their  characteristics  also  are  exceedingly  varied. 
In  the  public  and  private  records  of  the  colony  there  are  to  be 
found  traits  of  profound  and  of  thoughtless  men,  men  crafty 
and  men  open-minded,  mild  or  haughty,  religious  or  profane, 
moral  or  immoral,  learned  or  ignorant,  freedom-loving  or 
despotic,  small-minded  men  in  office,  puffed  up  with  notions 
of  their  boundless  importance,  men  of  shrewd  business  ca- 
pacity, and  reckless  speculators,  —  all  very  much  as  may  be 
found  upon  the  island  of  Manhattan  in  this  year  of  grace 
nineteen  hundred  and  two.  About  the  only  type  which  the 
author  has  been  unable  to  meet  with  in  his  researches  is 
the  dunder-headed  Dutchman  of  fictitious  history  and  of  his- 
torical fiction, — the  embodiment  of  the  popular  idea  of  the 
Dutch  phlegmatic  temperament;  a  marvellous  compound  of 
Captain  Bunsby  and  the  Fat  Boy  in  Pickwick. 

At  a  later  period  Mr.  D.  T.  Valentine  began  the  first  really 
earnest  and  systematic  attempt  to  bring  out  the  actual  features 
of  the  old  Dutch  establishment.  The  labors  of  this  gen- 
tleman were  severe,  though  not  very  methodical,  and  he  is 
entitled  to  great  credit  for  the  mass  of  materials  which  he  has 
brought  together  out  of  their  original  obscurity.  Mr.  Valen- 
tine, however,  was  not  very  well  acquainted  with  the  Dutch 
language,  and,  worse  than  that,  he  was  peculiarly  prone  to 
giving  fanciful  explanations  to  imperfectly  understood  facts. 
These  sometimes  led  to  the  most  extraordinary  and  absurd 
conclusions.  Thus,  for  example,  when  some  years  after  the 
surrender  to  the  English,  the  ferry-master  at  Haarlem  discov- 
ered that  he  was  being  deprived  of  his  legitimate  fees  by  a 
practice  which  had  grown  up  among  the  drovers  of  driving 
their  horses  and  cattle  through  the  woods  to  a  ford  across 
the  narrow  Spuyten  Duyvil  Creek,  near  the  present  King's 
Bridge,  and  there  wading  across  at  certain  stages  of  the  tide, 
he  applied  for  permission  to  erect  a  tavern  at  this  spot  for  the 


PREFACE 


vii 


purpose  of  watching  the  wading-place.  Mr.  Valentine  appears 
to  have  found  a  portion  of  the  record  granting  the  ferry- 
master  the  privilege  of  establishing  the  tavern  at  what  is 
designated  by  the  illiterate  scribe  as  "  the  wedding-place." 
Thereupon  Mr.  Valentine  has  given  a  romantic  account,  to  the 
effect  that  this  paltry  tavern,  in  its  lonely  and  then  almost 
inaccessible  location  in  the  wilderness,  received  its  name 
from  being  the  favorite  resort  of  wedding  parties  from  New 
Amsterdam. 

Again,  in  the  case  of  Gerrit  Hendricksen,  who  was  famil- 
iarly called  —  in  all  probability  from  some  peculiarity  of  his 
person  or  habitual  dress — "  de  blauw  boer"  literally,  the  blue 
boor  or  farmer,  Mr.  Valentine,  having  found  certain  deeds 
in  which  the  property  is  described  as  adjoining  "  de  blauw 
boer,"  has  in  some  inexplicable  manner  translated  the  phrase 
as  "  The  Blue  Boar"  and  (perhaps  with  visions  of  the  Boar's 
Head  in  Eastcheap  in  his  mind)  has  gravely  stated  that  the 
premises  referred  to  tvere  occupied  as  a  tavern  with  the  sign  of 
the  Blue  Boar.  • 

Many  other  examples  of  Mr.  Valentine's  inaccuracies  might 
be  given,  but  the  foregoing  will  suffice.  They  seem  to  have 
been  very  carefully  followed  in  many  instances  by  subsequent 
writers  whose  accounts  are  based  upon  his  researches.  Even 
in  the  case  of  so  graceful  a  writer  as  the  author  of  the  "  Tour 
around  New  York,"  his  work  is  marred  by  numerous  errors 
whenever  he  quits  the  domain  of  personal  reminiscences. 

Since,  then,  Washington  Irving  has  described  New  Amster- 
dam, not  as  it  was ;  and  since  Mr.  Valentine  has  described  it, 
in  many  respects  as  it  was  not,  there  seemed  to  be  some  room 
for  an  attempt  to  extract  from  the  original  records  something 
which  should  more  closely  represent  the  actual  conditions 
existing  in  the  Dutch  town,  —  whence  the  present  essay. 

The  work  is  mainly  based  upon  topographical  researches, 
the  dangerous  field  of  family  genealogy  having  been  avoided 
by  the  author  as  far  as  possible,  except  where  it  seemed 
necessary  to  introduce  genealogical  matter  in  order  to  eluci- 
date various  portions  of  the  text. 


viii 


PREFACE 


The  especial  acknowledgments  of  the  author  are  due  to 
Mr.  W.  Eames,  Librarian  of  the  Lenox  Library,  for  many 
favors  in  the  prosecution  of  his  researches,  and  more  particu- 
larly for  placing  at  his  service  the  extensive  and  very  valuable 
Bancker  Collection,  so-called,  of  plans  and  surveys,  in  the 
possession  of  the  Library.  These,  though  only  of  indirect 
benefit  to  the  author  in  the  present  work,  are  invaluable  to 
the  student  of  the  topography  of  New  York  in  the  later 
Colonial  period. 

So,  too,  the  especial  thanks  of  the  author  are  owing  to  his 
friend,  Mr.  A.  J.  F.  van  Laer,  Librarian  of  the  Manuscript 
Department  of  the  State  Library  at  Albany,  for  the  unwearied 
patience  and  courtesy  with  which  he  has  met  the  author's 
somewhat  large  calls  upon  his  time  and  attention,  and  for  the 
valuable  information  received  from  him  upon  many  points. 
The  enthusiastic  interest  which  this  gentleman  has  shown  in 
the  history  and  antiquities  of  the  offshoot  from  his  native 
country,  which,  planted  upon  the  island  of  Manhattan  in  the 
early  portion  of  the  seventeenth  century,  has  grown  from 
feeble  beginnings  till  it  is  threatening  to  rob  London  itself  of 
the  municipal  pre-eminence  of  the  world,  cannot  but  be  grat- 
ifying to  a  native  New  York  student  of  the  history  of  the 
latter  metropolis. 

J.  H.  I. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 

Page 

Early  Growth  of  the  Settlement. —  The  Common  Pasture 
Field.  —  Brugh  Straet  and  Brouwer  Straet.  —  Philip 
Geraerdy  and  hie  White  Horse  Tavern  1 


CHAPTER  II 

Winckel  Straet,  and  the  House  of  Dominie  Bogardus.  — 
The  West  India  Company's  Old  Storehouse.  —  Schreyers 
Hoek  13 

CHAPTER  III 

The  West  India  Company  and  its  Colonial  Officers.  —  The 
Quarrel  between  Director  Kieft  and  Dominie  Bogardus. 
—  The  Wreck  of  the  "Princess"  21 


CHAPTER  IV 

"The  Five  Stone  Houses."  —  The  Brugh  Steegh,  or  Bridge 
Lane.  —  The  Brewery  of  the  West  India  Company.  — 
Pieter  Cornelissen  and  his  Garden.  —  Hendrick  Kip, 
The  Tailor  31 


CHAPTER  V 

Hendrick  Kip  and  his  House.  —  The  Kip  Cottages  on  Stone 
Street.  —  Jan  Jansen  van  St.  Obin  and  the  Slave  Ship 
"Gideon"  38 


CHAPTER  VI 

The  Wtater-side. — Dr.  Hans  Kiersted.  —  The  Houses  of 
cornelis  van  steenwyck  and  johannes  xevius.  — cap- 
TAIN Paulus  Vandergrift.— The  New  Storehouse  of 
the  West  India  Company.  —  The  Warehouse  of  Augus- 
ty\  II  Hermans. —  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven.  —  The  Old 
Church  and  Parsonage  45 


X 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  VII 

Page 


Adam  Roelantsen,  the  First  Schoolmaster  in  New  Amster- 
dam, and  his  House  on  Stone  Street.  —  Captain  Willem 
Tomassen  61 

CHAPTER  VIII 

Surgeon  Van  der  Bogaerdt  and  his  House.  —  His  Tragical 
Death. — The  Privateer  "La  Garce"  and  her  Prizes. — 
Isaac  de  Foreest  68 


CHAPTER  IX 

The  Van  Cortlandt  Homestead.  —  Catherine  van  Cort- 
landt  and  her  cliurch  at  sleepy  hollow.  —  van  couwen- 
hoven's  Houses  on  Stone  Street.  —  Pieter  Hartgers, 
the  Wampum  Commissioner  75 

CHAPTER  X 

The  "  Ditch,"  or  Graft.  —  Teunis  Craie  and  his  Houses  on 
the  Ditch.  —  The  Jews  in  New  Amsterdam.  —  Solomon 
La  Chair,  the  Notary,  and  his  Tavern.  —  The  Banish- 
ment OF  MlCHIEL  PlCQUET  81 

CHAPTER  XI 

Cornelis  Melyn,  Patroon  of  Staten  Island.  —  The  Indian 
Troubles.  — Jochem  Pietersen  Kuyter. — The  Struggles 
of  Melyn  and  Kuyter  against  the  Colonial  Authorities. 
—  The  Baron  Van  der  Capellen.  —  Sibout  Claesen,  of 
Hoorn  94 

CHAPTER  XII 

Jacob  Steendam,  the  Dutch  Poet,  and  his  House.  —  His 
Poetical  Works.  —  "Den  Distelvink."  —  Poems  on  New 


Netherland. — His  Latter  Years  at  Batavia  .    .    .    .  127 

CHAPTER  XIII 

Jacob  van  Couwenhoven  and  his  Brewery.  —  Prinse 
Straet,  and  "The  Gardens."  —  Slyck  Steegh,  or  Mill 
Lane.  —  The  Bark  Mill.  —  Dominie  Michaelis  and  the 
First  Dutch  Church.  —  Evert  Duyckink  144 


CONTENTS 


XI 


CHAPTER  XIV 

Page 

The  Houses  of  Barent  Jansen,  Jan  Nagel,  Claes  Carsten- 
sen,  and  jochem  calder.  —  pleter  andrikssen  and  his 
Troubles  with  the  Indians.  —  Nicholas  de  Meyer.  — 
Wessel  Evertsen,  the  Fisherman. — Rut  Jacobsen    .    .  161 


CHAPTER  XV 

The  "Great  Tavern,"  afterwards  the  Town  Hall. — 
Its  Historical  and  Political  Associations.  —  Dominie 
Bogardus's  Party.  —  The  Courts.  —  The  Shirt  Case.  — 
Governor  Lovelace's  Tavern  175 


CHAPTER  XVI 

The  "English  Quarter,"  and  the  Grants  to  Thomas 
wlllet  and  to  rlchard  smith.  —  wllliam  paterson, 
the  Scotchman,  and  his  Adventures.  —  Who  was  he?  — 
An  Historical  Problem  192 


CHAPTER  XVII 

Hanover  Square  and  Burger's  Path.  —  Burger  Jorissen, 
the  Smith.  — The  Thirty  Years'  War.  —  Hendrick  Jan- 
sen, the  Tailor,  and  his  Opinion  of  Director  Kieft. 
—  Smith  Street  223 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

GOVERT    LOOCKERMANS    AND    HIS    FAMILY.  —  ELSIE  LeISLER. 

—The  Loockermans'    House  and   its  Associations.— 
Captain  Kidd  235 


CHAPTER  XIX 

Sergeant  Daniel  Litscho  and  his  Tavern.  —  Andries  Joch- 
emsen.  —  The  "  Outhoek."  —  Wall  Street  and  the 
Palisades  of  1653.  — Tymen  Jansen,  the  Ship  Carpenter, 
and  his  House  267 


CHAPTER  XX 

The  Smits  Vly.  —  Hendrick  Jansen's  Grant.  —  Augustyn 
Heermans  and  his  House.  — Maryn  Adriaensen  and  his 
Attack  on  Director  Kieft  279 


xii 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  XXI 

Page 

The  Maagde  Paetje,  or  Maiden  Lane.  —  Skipper  Cornelis- 
8en. — frederik  lubbertsen  and  his  house.  — jan  and 
Mary  Peeck.  —  Sander  Leendertsen's  House.  —  Jan 
Vtnje,  the  First  White  Child  born  in  New  Nether- 
land.  —  Vinje's  Brewery  296 


CHAPTER  XXII 

Secretary  Van  Tienhoven's  Bouwery  of  "  Wallenstein." 
—  The  Gouwenberg.  —  Van  Tienhoven's  Lane.  —  The 
Vanderclyff  Family  309 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

The  Hamlet  at  the  Ferry.  —  Lambert  Moll.  —  Hage 
Bruynsen,  the  Swede.  —  Dirck  Volckertsen  and  his 
Brother-in-Law,  Abraham  Verplanck.  —  Thomas  Hall's 
Place  319 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

The  Town's  End  and  Bestevaers  Kreupelbosch.  —  Isaac 
Allerton  and  his  Warehouse.  —  Loockermans'  Farm. — 
The  Ferry.  —  Harry  Brazier's  House.  —  Dirck,  the 
Potter  329 


APPENDIX  I 

The  Justus  Danckers  View  of  New  Amsterdam   ....  347 

APPENDIX  II 

The  Descendants  of  Cornelis  Melyn  350 


INDEX 


357 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


View  of  New  Amsterdam  about  1650   Frontispiece 

(Reversed  from  a  copy  of  the  etching  of  Justus  Danckers'  Amster- 
dam, in  the  author's  possession.) 

Plan  of  New  Amsterdam  about  1644   To  face  page  1 

New  Amsterdam  about  1630    "  2 

(From  the  View  in  Hartgers'  "  Beschrijvingh  van  Virginia," 
Lenox  Library,  New  York  City.) 

Schreyers  Hoek  Toren,  Amsterdam   "  18 

(From  Wagenaar's  "Amsterdam.") 

The  West  India  Company's  House,  Amsterdam    .    .       "  22 

(From  a  print  of  1693.) 
The  West  India  Company's  Warehouse   44  24 

(From  a  print  in  the  author's  possession.) 

Plan  of  the  Ground  between  Brugh  Straet  and  the 

East  River,  New  Amsterdam,  in  1655  ....       "  44 

Cornelis  van  Steenwyck   "  48 

(From  the  portrait  in  Manual  of  the  New  York  Common  Coun- 
cil, 1864.) 

View  of  the  Marckveldt  and 't  Water,  1652     ...       44  58 
(Enlarged  from  the  Justus  Danckers  and  Visscher  Views  of  New 
Amsterdam.) 

Plan  of  Brouwer  Straet  and  Hoogh  Straet  from  Fort 

Amsterdam  to  the  Stadt  Huys   "  80 

View  of  the  East  River  Shore  in  the  vicinity  of  the 

44  Graft,"  1652    44  104 

(Enlarged  from  the  Justus  Danckers  and  Visscher  Views  of  New 
Amsterdam.) 

The  Heere  Graft,  Amsterdam,  1795    44  122 

(From  an  aquatint  engraving  in  Ireland's  "  Tour  through  Hol- 
land.") 

View  of  the  Southeast  Corner  of  Broad  and  Stone 

Streets   44  124 


xiv  LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Jacob  Steendam  —  The  Kooman  Portrait     .    .    To  face  page  130 

(From  a  print  in  the  Lenox  Library,  New  York.) 

South  William  Street  —  The  Ancient  Slyck  Steegh  .  44  150 
View  of  the  Oude  Kerk,  or  Old  Church,  Amsterdam  .       "  156 

(From  Wagenaar's  "Amsterdam.") 

Stone  Street   »  170 

The  Old  Stadts  Herbergh,  or  City  Tavern,  Amsterdam       "  176 

(From  Wagenaar's  "  Amsterdam.") 

Plan  of  the  Stadt  Huys,  or  Town  Hall  of  New  Am- 
sterdam   "  178 

The  Stadts  Herbergh  and  vicinity,  1 652    "  182 

(Enlarged  from  the  Justus  Danckers  and  Visscher  Views  of  New 
Amsterdam.) 

The  Stadt  Huys  and  Burgers  Path,  1679    44  188 

(From  the  Danker  and  Sluyter  View,  Memoirs  L.  I.  Historical 
Society.) 

Coenties  Alley   44  192 

Portrait  of  William  Paterson   "  206 

(From  a  Wash  drawing  in  the  British  Museum.) 

View  of  Old  Slip   44  222 

Hanover  Square   44  224 

Plan  of  New  Amsterdam,  from  the  Stadt  Huys  to  the 

Town  Palisades,  1655    44  240 

North  Side  of  Wall  Street   44  272 

Plan  of  New  Amsterdam,  from  the  Palisades  to  the 

Ferry,  16  55    44     2  78 

Augustyn  Heermans   44  282 

(From  the  Portrait  by  himself  on  his  Map  of  Maryland,  British 
Museum.) 

Looking  up  Maiden  Lane  from  Pearl  Street .    ...  44  296 

View  of  Gold  Street   "  298 

Intersection  of  John  and  Pearl  Streets   "  310 

A  Part  of  Van  Tienhoven's  Lane,  1902    44  312 

44  The  Swamp/'  1902    44  326 

Allerton's  Warehouse  and  the  Old  Ferry,  1679     .    .  "  336 

(From  the  Danker  and  Sluyter  View.) 


NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


• 


X 


NEW  AMSTERDAM 
AND    ITS  PEOPLE 


CHAPTER  I 


EARLY  GROWTH  OF  THE  SETTLEMENT.— THE  COMMON 
PASTURE  FIELD.  —  BRUGH  STRAET  AND  BROUWER 
STRAET.  — PHILIP  GERAERDY  AND  THE  WHITE  HORSE 
TAVERN 


HE  city  of  New  York  has  been  fortunate  in  the  pres- 


1  ervation  of  the  early  records  of  its  settlement.  The 
study  of  the  beginnings  of  the  great  centres  of  population  of 
the  world  possesses  a  peculiar  interest  for  many,  but  the  early 
history  of  some  of  these  cities,  such  as  Rome,  London,  and 
Paris,  is  lost  in  the  obscurity  of  ages  long  past ;  while  others, 
such  as  St.  Petersburg,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  Berlin,  built 
in  pursuance  of  a  rigid,  pre-arranged  plan  of  the  governmental 
powers,  possess  no  more  of  antiquarian  interest  than  does  the 
growth  of  New  York  under  the  Commissioners'  plan  of  1807. 

In  New  Amsterdam,  however,  the  early  growth  of  the  town 
was  not  only  in  accordance  with  the  process  of  natural  accre- 
tion, but  it  was  made  under  the  auspices  of  the  West  India 
Company,  a  private  corporation,  which  kept  a  rather  jealous 
eye  upon  its  officials  and  itj  colonists,  and  maintained  a  con- 
stant intercommunication  with  them,  by  means  of  reports, 
letters  of  instruction,  and  a  system  of  records  of  even  the 
most  trivial  transactions.    These  documents,  though  most  of 


Nor  you,  ye  proud,  impute  to  these  the  fault, 
If  mem'ry  o'er  their  tomh  no  trophies  raise, 

Where  through  the  long-drawn  aisle  and  fretted  vault 
The  pealing  anthem  swells  the  note  of  praise. 

Gray. 


•  1 


2        NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


the  very  earliest  of  them  are  supposed  to  have  perished,  are 
quite  complete  aud  full  from  the  year  1838,  and  from  them  it 
is  possible  to  gain  a  comprehensive  view  of  New  Amsterdam 
at  almost  any  subsequent  period  during  the  Dutch  rule. 

The  early  course  of  building  at  the  new  settlement  is  pretty 
well  known.  The  original  log  blockhouse,  with  its  surround- 
ing palisades,  undoubtedly  occupied  a  part  of  the  site  of  the 
later  Fort  Amsterdam ;  that  is  to  say,  it  stood  within  the  space 
embraced  by  the  present  Bowling  Green,  Whitehall,  Bridge, 
and  State  streets.  Clustering  around  this  structure  were  the 
small  cabins  of  the  first  settlers,  most  of  whom  were  mere 
Indian  traders.  Many  of  these  cabins  were  doubtless  de- 
stroyed soon  after  the  larger  fortifications  were  "  staked  out," 
as  it  is  expressed  in  a  letter  of  1626.  The  remainder  of  the 
thirty  dwelling-houses  which  had  been  built  before  the  close 
of  that  year  were  apparently  scattered  in  the  vicinity  of  the 
blockhouse,  in  such  positions  as  had  been  chosen  by  the 
builders,  no  system  of  streets  existing  as  yet,  and  the  houses 
possibly  not  being  considered  as  permanent.  Afterwards,  in 
a  few  instances  these  earliest  settlers  received  grants  of  the 
plots  which  they  had  thus  pre-empted,  in  this  way  causing 
some  irregularity  and  inconvenience  in  the  ground-plan  sub- 
sequently adopted.1  These  early  cabins  are  said  to  have  been 
"  of  bark."  They  were  probably  duly  framed  of  hewn 
timber,  but  owing  to  the  lack  of  saw-mills  at  this  time  had 
been  covered,  after  the  fashion  of  shingling,  with  the  thick 
bark  of  the  chestnut  or  of  other  suitable  forest  trees.  The 
roofs  were  all  thatched  with  the  native  reeds.2 

1  See,  however,  the  remarks  in  note,  post,  page  33,  as  to  the  indications  of  a 
system  of  streets ;  or  rather  lanes,  earlier  than  that  finally  adopted. 

2  It  is  the  writer's  opinion  that  the  very  valuable  engraved  view  of  New  Am- 
sterdam, usually  spoken  of  as  the  "  Hartgers  view,"  which  is  supposed  to  be 
the  earliest  one  extant  of  the  settlement,  is  to  be  referred  to  the  period  above 
spoken  of  in  the  text,  and  may  be  fixed  wi^i  comparative  certainty  to  some  time 
between  the  years  1628  and  1632,  a  date  considerably  earlier  than  is  usually  as- 
scribed  to  it.  A  slight  examination  of  this  view  by  any  person  acquainted  with 
the  early  topography  of  New  Amsterdam  will  show  that  it  is  a  reversed  one, 
and  as  such  must,  in  all  probability,  have  been  taken  J>y  means  of  a  plain 
camera  obscura,  —  no  doubt  from  some  point  on  the  Lon£  Island  shore,  —  and 


THE  COMPANY'S  BOUWERYS 


3 


Soon  after  the  first  body  of  agricultural  settlers  sent  over 
by  the  West  India  Company  had  arrived,  at  about  the  period 
last  mentioned,  and  after  the  Director,  Peter  Minuit,  had 
effected  the  purchase  of  Manhattan  Island  from  the  Indians, 
a  body  of  negro  slaves  belonging  to  the  Company  was  set  to 
work  clearing  a  large  space  of  ground  east  of  the  present 
Bowery,  and  extending  from  a  fresh-water  swamp  occupy- 
ing the  site  of  the  present  Roosevelt  and  James  streets  to 
Eighteenth  or  Twentieth  Street.  This  tract  was  divided  into 
six  "  bouwerys  "  or  farms,  which,  with  the  buildings  erected 
upon  them  by  the  West  India  Company,  and  with  certain 
stock  furnished  by  that  body,  were  leased  to  various  tenants. 

In  addition  to  these  farms,  several  clearings  were  begun  by 
individuals,  who  were  promised  grants  of  land  on  favorable 

never  restored  to  its  true  position.  The  correct  view  appears  by  simply  holding 
a  mirror  to  the  reversed  one.  Having  been  obtained  by  this  method,  it  is  evident 
that  the  sketch  must  approach  accuracy  in  its  main  details,  subject,  of  course,  to 
some  impairment  owing  to  the  small  scale  upon  which  the  picture  is  drawn. 
Examining  it,  now,  closely,  we  find  one  of  its  principal  features  to  be  a  row  of 
stepped  gables  running  parallel  with  the  east  side  of  the  fort,  and  belonging  to 
some  buildings  of  more  than  ordinary  size.  These  can  be  none  other  than  the 
Company's  "Stone  Houses"  upon  Winckel  Straet.  Between  them  and  the  river 
shore  no  sign  appears  of  the  church,  erected  in  1633.  A  small  cluster  of  cottages 
is  seen  upon  the  westerly  side  of  the  Broad  Street  swamp  and  its  ditch  ;  another 
group  near  the  intersection  of  the  present  Beaver  Street  and  Broadway ;  and  a 
few  more  near  the  windmill  upon  the  North  River  shore.  The  buildings  shown 
number  about  thirty  or  thirty-five.  Upon  the  East  River  shore  is  shown  the 
bluff,  just  west  of  which  the  City  Tavern  was  erected  in  1641  ;  a  thicket  or  grove 
upon  its  summit  undoubtedly  conceals  from  view  a  building  of  much  interest,  the 
old  bark  mill,  in  its  isolated  location  east  of  the  swamp  or  Blommaert's  Vly,  in 
the  loft  of  which  building  the  first  church  services  were  held.  Most  of  these 
localities  will  he  treated  of  more  in  detail  in  the  text.  As  for  the  matter  which 
seems  to  have  somewhat  puzzled  Mr.  G.  M.  Asher  in  his  "  Essay  on  the  Books 
and  Pamphlets  relating  to  New  Netherland,"  —  that  no  buildings  are  shown 
within  the  fort,  the  answer  is  that  none  were  as  yet  built  there  ;  and  the  main 
design  of  the  view  is  evidently  to  show  the  newly  planned  fortification,  as  origi- 
nally contemplated,  for  it  will  be  noticed  that  the  walls  show  embrasures,  which, 
as  far  as  we  are  informed,  never  existed  there,  the  structure  as  finished  being 
merely  a  sodded  earthwork,  upon  which  the  guns  were  mounted  en  barbette. 
There  is  also  a  fifth  bastion  shown,  upon  the  south  side  of  the  fort,  of  which 
no  mention  is  made  in  the  records  or  in  maps.  It  is  not  at  all  improbable  that 
this  view  was  originally  annexed  to  a  plan,  or  report  of  the  engineer,  to  the  West 
India  Company. 


4        NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


terms  by  the  Company;  while  to  aid  in  providing  for  the 
maintenance  of  its  officials  and  servants  of  various  degrees, 
the  West  India  Company  caused  to  be  cleared  and  placed 
under  cultivation  the  tract  extending  from  Fulton  to  Cham- 
bers Street,  and  from  Broadway  to  the  North  River,  well 
known  at  first  as  the  "  Company's  Bouwery ; "  then,  after 
the  surrender,  in  1664,  as  the  "  Duke's  Farm,"  and  the 
"  King's  Farm,"  by  virtue  of  its  confiscation  to  the  Crown ; 
and  later  as  the  "Church  Farm,"  the  property  of  Trinity 
Church. 

The  cleared  land  upon  all  these  bouwerys,  however,  was 
immediately  taken  up  for  the  cultivation  of  tobacco  or  grain, 
and  no  suitable  pasture  was  found  for  the  cattle.  To  remedy 
this,  the  Company  cleared  in  part,  and  enclosed  for  a  common 
pasture  field,  a  tract  of  twenty-five  or  thirty  acres,  extending 
from  the  west  side  of  Broadway  to  the  present  Nassau  and 
Chatham  streets,  and  from  the  line  of  Ann  Street  up  to  a 
small  pond  known  as  the  "  Little  Kolck,"  near  the  present 
Duane  Street.1  To  this  pasture  field  and  to  the  Company's 
Farm  a  road  extended  from  the  fort,  along  the  present  Broad- 
way, then  turning  eastward  and  again  northward,  it  skirted 
the  common  pasture  field,  following  the  lines  of  the  present 
Ann,  Nassau,  and  Chatham  streets  as  far  as  a  point  about  at 
the  junction  of  North  William  and  Chatham  streets,  where  it 
deviated  to  the  eastward  for  the  purpose  of  going  around  the 
high  ground  known  as  Catiemut's  Hill  (this  portion  of  the 
road  has  long  been  closed),  after  which  it  passed  along 
the  present  Chatham  Square  and  the  Bowery,  giving  access  to 
the  farms  already  mentioned.  After  the  lapse  of  many  years, 
when  the  enclosure  spoken  of  was  no  longer  used  for  a  com- 
mon pasture,  and  when  the  fences  had  been  removed,  the  road 
naturally  struck  a  diagonal  line  across  -the  open  space,  thus 
marking  out  the  present  Park  Row.  The  earlier  route,  as 
above  mentioned,  however,  was  in  all  probability  the  first 

1  There  was,  however,  a  temporary  pasturage  enclosure  laid  out  at  the  time 
of  the  arrival  of  the  first  agricultural  colonists.  This,  the  well-known  Schaapen 
Weide,  or  Sheep  Pasture,  south  of  Wall  Street,  will  be  spoken  of  hereafter. 


FIRST  SAW-MILL 


5 


road  of  any  considerable  length  on  Manhattan  Island,1  ante- 
dating by  several  years  the  river  road  along  the  upper  portion 
of  the  present  Pearl  Street. 

Soon  after  1626,  the  machinery  for  a  saw-mill  arrived  from 
Holland.  This  mill,  worked  by  wind-power,  after  the  Holland 
fashion,  was  erected  on  the  shore  of  Nutten,  now  Governor's 
Island,  — a  situation  which  will  seem  the  less  singular  if  one 
calls  to  mind  not  only  the  facilities  for  floating  logs  to  the 
spot  from  the  neighboring  shores,  but  also  the  hundred  acres 
and  more  on  the  island  itself,  overgrown  with  the  forest  of 
chestnut,  oak,  and  hickory  trees  which  had  given  the  island 
its  name.  With  the  advent  of  this  mill,  of  course,  the  build- 
ings of  New  Amsterdam  began  to  assume  a  more  finished 
appearance.  Within  a  few  years  after  1633  they  had  extended 
easterly  along  the  north  side  of  Pearl  Street  (which  here  ran 
nearly  along  the  shore  of  the  river)  almost  as  far  as  the  pres- 
ent Broad  Street,  where  at  this  time  the  tide  ebbed  and  flowed 
through  a  small  salt-water  creek  which  received  the  drainage 
of  a  considerable  area  of  wet  land  lying  a  short  distance  back 
from  the  river.  Here  a  bridge  was  built,  which  afforded 
access  to  a  few  scattered  houses  along  the  shore  beyond. 

As  the  importance  of  the  settlement  grew,  the  West  India 
Company  determined  to  provide  more  effectually  for  its  pro- 
tection ;  and  the  fort,  laid  out  in  1628,  according  to  the  mili- 
tary science  of  the  day,  by  an  engineer  sent  from  Holland, 
had  been  completed  by  the  year  1635,  together  with  the 
various  offices  of  government  which  it  contained.  It  was 
designed  at  first  to  surround  the  fort  with  a  broad  esplanade, 
but  this  plan  was  afterwards  for  various  reasons  abandoned ; 
while  it  was  entertained,  however,  certain  buildings  of  the 
West  India  Company  were  constructed  east  of  the  fort,  to 
face  the  esplanade,  and  at  a  distance  of  nearly  two  hundred 
feet  from  the  wall.  These  were  a  row  of  five  stone  houses 
containing  various  workshops  of  the  Company,  and  will  be 
spoken  of  more  in  detail  hereafter;  they  played  a  most  im- 
portant part  in  the  topography  of  the  rising  town.    When  it 

1  See  post,  pages  152  and  271,  as  to  the  lane  known  as  the  Slyck  Steegh. 


6        NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


became  desirable,  a  few  years  after  the  construction  of  these 
buildings,  to  lay  out  additional  streets  for  the  increasing  pop- 
ulation, one  street  was  laid  out  from  the  south  end  of  this 
row  of  buildings  towards  the  bridge  at  Broad  Street  before 
spoken  of,  and  this  received  the  name  of  Brugh  Straet,  or 
Bridge  Street,  its  present  designation ;  while  a  parallel  one 
from  the  north  end  of  the  row  of  shops,  was  called,  from  the 
West  India  Company's  brewery,  which  stood  upon  it,  by  the 
name  of  Brouwer  Straet,  and  when,  a  number  of  years  after- 
wards, it  was  the  first  street  in  the  town  to  be  paved  with 
cobblestones,  it  was  called  the  Stony  Street,  and  is  to-day 
still  known  as  Stone  Street. 

In  the  mean  time,  while  these  changes  were  going  on  in 
the  village,  most  of  the  available  farming  land  in  the  lower 
half  of  Manhattan  Island  had  been  appropriated.  A  great 
deal  of  the  territory,  picturesque  enough  to  the  eye,  offered 
few  inducements  to  the  Dutch  farmers,  who  arrived  in  in- 
creasing numbers,  —  it  was  "scrubby,"  as  they  wrote  home. 
Consequently,  these  began  to  turn  their  attention  to  the 
neighboring  parts  of  New  Jersey  and  of  Long  Island,  where 
at  Pavonia  and  Bergen,  at  Gouwanus  and  the  Wallabout, 
and  along  the  "  Mespat  Kill,"  —  the  present  malodorous 
Newtown  Creek,  —  and  upon  the  East  River  shore,  they 
settled  along  the  edges  of  the  marshes,  "like  frogs  around 
a  pond,"  as  Pliny  has  it.  These  first  settlements  over  the 
river  were  made  about  in  the  years  1636-40:  a  ferry  now 
became  desirable,  and  was  probably  started  about  this  period, 
at  a  point  where  the  river  was  narrowest,  near  the  present 
Dover  Street.  To  meet  the  travel  from  this  ferry,  a  road  was 
extended  eastward  till  it  came  out  upon  the  river  shore  near 
the  present  Hanover  Square,  and  from  that  point  it  followed 
the  water-side  to  the  ferry.  East  of  the  present  Broad 
Street,  it  became  known  as  the  Hoogh  Straet,  or  High  Street ; 
along  it  and  along  the  East  River  shore,  houses  began  to 
spring  up,  and  this  part  of  the  town  became  for  a  long  time 
the  principal  seat  of  the  social  and  business  activity  of  the 
place. 


THE  WHITE  HORSE  TAVERN 


7 


By  the  year  1655,  considerable  attention  had  been  paid  to 
regulating  the  streets  and  removing  encroachments,  and  New 
Amsterdam  had  begun  to  assume  the  appearance  of  a  settled 
town.  Selecting  that  period  of  time  for  a  survey  of  some  of 
the  features  of  the  Dutch  settlement,  let  us  take  our  station 
at  the  head  of  Brouwer,  or  Stone  Street ;  in  front  of  us,  across 
the  Marckveldt,  —  later  Whitehall  Street,  but  now  usually 
known  as  an  extension  of  Broadway, — rise  the  sodded  ram- 
parts of  Fort  Amsterdam,  with  one  of  its  brass  six-pounders 
trained  directly  down  the  narrow  street.  Inside  the  fort 
walls  appears  the  broad  stone  back  of  the  Governor's  house, 
flanked  by  two  great  exterior  chimneys  at  the  ends ;  and  to 
the  left  or  south  of  this,  likewise  within  the  fort,  is  the 
Dutch  church  with  its  steep  double-gabled  roof  and  low  bel- 
fry. Beyond  these  buildings  may  perhaps  be  seen  the  tall 
flagstaff  with  the  orange,  white,  and  blue  colors  of  the  West 
India  Company,  and  a  glimpse  may  be  caught  likewise  of  the 
slowly  revolving  sails  of  the  Company's  grist-mill,  on  a  little 
knoll  outside  the  fort,  on  the  site  of  the  present  Battery 
Park.  Behind  us,  the  unpaved  street 1  slopes  down  towards 
a  small  bridge  at  the  ditch,  or  graft,  in  what  is  now  Broad 
Street;  and  at  our  right,  upon  the  northeast  corner  of  the 
street,  is  the  White  Horse  Tavern  of  Philip  Geraerdy. 

Just  what  induced  Philip  Ge'rard,  as  he  called  himself,  or 
Geraerdy,  as  his  Dutch  neighbors  called  him,  to  quit  Paris 
(for  that  was  his  native  place),  and  to  try  his  fortunes  in  the 
little  village  springing  up  around  the  fort  at  New  Amster- 
dam, it  is  not  easy  to  surmise.  The  Paris  of  the  first  half  of 
the  seventeenth  century  was,  even  more  than  the  Paris  of 
a  century  later,  the  centre  of  the  political,  literary,  and  social 
life  of  Europe  ;  and  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  native 
Parisian  of  that  time  had  greater  predilections  for  the  dull 
life  of  a  colonist  than  the  Parisians  of  later  days.  Cardinal 
Richelieu,  the  most  subtle  politician  of  that  age,  with  his 

1  The  residents  of  this  street  petitioned  on  the  15th  of  March,  1655,  that  they 
might  be  allowed  to  pave  the  street  with  cobblestones  at  their  own  expense,  but 
no  action  was  taken  iu  the  matter  for  a  considerable  period. 


8        NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


tenacious  purpose  of  humbling  the  House  of  Austria,  had 
indeed  recently  thrown  France  (in  alliance  with  Sweden), 
into  the  bloody  struggle  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  which  was 
then  desolating  Germany  and  the  Flemish  provinces :  there 
was  a  constant  demand  for  recruits  for  the  French  armies, 
and  Philip  was  of  the  military  age,  —  born  about  1602,  — 
and  as  the  great  French  and  Swedish  generals  of  that  day 
had  the  habit  of  very  freely  exposing  their  men  to  the  enemy, 
Philip  may  have  considered  the  somewhat  monotonous  ser- 
vice of  the  West  India  Company  a  refuge  from  the  risks  of 
that  most  bloody  warfare,  —  as,  in  fact,  did  many  others. 

However  this  may  be,  Philip  Ge'rard  and  Marie  Pollet,  his 
wife,  found  their  way  to  New  Amsterdam  prior  to  1639,  and 
soon  established  a  small  tavern  —  in  fact,  small  enough  to  be 
sometimes  designated  a  mere  koek-huys,  or  cake-house  — 
upon  the  corner  of  the  Marckveldt  and  Brouwer  Straet. 

The  change  which  awaited  Philip  in  quitting  the  French 
metropolis  must  have  been  a  great  one.  There,  all  was  bust- 
ling life,  but  surrounded  everywhere  by  memorials  of  times 
long  past :  in  the  Rue  St.  Denis  and  in  the  Rue  St.  Jacques 
he  must  have  often  watched  the  crowds  coming  and  going 
along  those  historic  highways  over  which  the  traffic  of  nigh 
two  thousand  years  had  passed ;  from  the  river-side,  at  the 
old  palace  of  the  Louvre,  he  had  doubtless  often  viewed  that 
scene,  never  to  be  forgotten,  where  between  the  ancient,  over- 
hanging houses  on  both  sides  of  the  Seine,  the  isle  of  La  Cite' 
appeared,  with  its  tall  old  mansions  and  sharp  open  point  at 
the  Place  Dauphine,  —  like  a  vast  galley  in  full  sail  down  the 
river,  the  great  bronze  equestrian  statue  of  Henri  Quatre  at  its 
prow,  and  the  heavy  square  towers  of  Notre  Dame  closing  the 
view.  From  the  same  point  too,  as  he  looked  southwards,  he 
could  see  the  tall  graceful  spire  of  Ste.  Genevieve,  where  it 
marked  the  tomb  of  King  Clovis ;  and  turning  down  the 
river  he  could  watch,  at  his  right,  the  gay  throngs  of  the 
people  of  fashion  in  the  garden  of  the  Tuileries,  or,  across 
the  river  at  his  left,  the  frolicking,  brawling,  drinking,  fight- 
ing, and  love-making  crowd  of  students  of  the  University,  in 


THE  WHITE  HORSE  TAVERN  9 


the  Pre*  aux  Clercs,  —  likely  enough  he  had  mingled  with  the 
latter  many  a  time. 

Now,  however,  in  New  Amsterdam,  all  his  surroundings 
were  new  and  humble:  from  the  garden  behind  his  tavern 
(which  garden  stretched  in  an  irregularly  shaped  plot  of 
nearly  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  in  length  towards  the  centre 
of  the  present  block,  and  together  with  the  site  of  the  tavern 
itself  is  at  present  covered  by  the  massive  pile  of  the  Produce 
Exchange),  he  looked,  in  the  first  years  of  his  residence  here, 
down  a  low  slope  of  open  ground  to  a  stretch  of  bogs  and 
bushes  extending  northwards,  with  a  little  sluggish  brook 
winding  through  it.  This  was  Blommaerts  Vly,  called  after 
two  or  three  early  settlers  of  that  name ;  it  is  now  covered  by 
Broad  Street  and  its  buildings.  Encircling  this  marsh,  the 
ground  rose  into  low  hills,  in  former  years  a  common  pasture 
ground  for  cattle,  and  afterwards  a  waste  spot,  where,  between 
boulders  and  blackberry  bushes,  the  negro  slaves  of  the  West 
India  Company  were  allowed  to  cultivate  for  their  own  use 
little  patches  of  Indian  corn,  beans,  and  other  vegetables,  till 
1638,  when  the  land  was  leased  by  the  Company  for  six  years 
to  Jan  Damen,  whose  farm  adjoined  it,  and  who  placed  part 
of  this  ground,  along  Broadway,  under  cultivation,  and  used 
part  as  a  sheep  pasture.  Between  these  enclosed  fields  of  the 
company  and  the  low  hillock  upon  which  Geraerdy's  tavern 
stood,  a  small  arm  of  the  marsh  extended  westwards.  This 
the  Company  had  attempted  to  drain  by  constructing  an  open 
ditch  along  the  line  of  the  present  Beaver  Street ;  and  along 
this  ditch  two  or  three  cottages  were  built:  from  Beaver 
Street  down  to  Stone,  along  the  present  Broadway,  were  one 
or  two  more  houses,  and  down  Stone  Street  as  many  more ; 
these  were  all  of  Philip  Geraerdy's  immediate  neighbors, 
when  he  built  the  White  Horse  tavern  in  1641.  The  tavern 
was,  as  has  been  said,  a  small  affair,  — only  eighteen  by  twenty- 
five  feet  in  size,  —  and  the  carpenter  who  erected  it  estimated 
that  seventy-five  florins,  or  thirty  to  forty  dollars  of  the 
present  currency,  would  compensate  him  for  his  time.  Its 
"  one  door  and  one  window  n  opened  into  an  apartment  which 


10       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


was  in  all  probability  kitchen,  dining-room,  parlor,  and  tap- 
room, and  its  thatched  roof  was  still  in  existence  as  late  as 
1658.  Philip's  tavern  connections  were  not,  in  fact,  of  the 
highest.  The  magnates  of  the  city  usually  patronized  the 
"City  Tavern,"  on  the  water-side;  the  country  people  from 
across  the  Hudson  River  resorted  to  the  tavern  kept  by  Pieter 
Kock  and  Annetje  his  wife,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
Marckveldt,  near  where  they  landed  their  market  boats ;  and 
the  Long  Island  farmers  were  in  the  habit  of  stopping  at 
Sergeant  Litschoe's  tavern  on  the  present  Pearl  Street. 
There  remained,  however,  a  considerable  class  to  draw  custom 
from,  composed  of  the  servants  and  "  cadets "  of  the  West 
India  Company,  from  the  adjacent  fort,  —  bumptious  young 
fellows  from  all  parts  of  Northern  Europe,  who  caroused  and 
brawled  at  the  tavern  when  off  duty,  and  who  not  infrequently 
paid  for  their  pranks  by  "  riding  the  wooden  horse,"  and  by 
other  military  punishments.  Here,  too,  when  now  and  then  a 
French  privateer  came  into  port,  the  French  sailors  were  wont 
to  resort,  to  negotiate  for  the  discounting  of  their  prize  money, 
or  for  forwarding  it  home ;  for  Philip  seems  to  have  been  a 
man  of  considerable  business  capacity,  and  besides  his  own 
language  was  acquainted  with  both  Dutch  and  English,  occa- 
sionally performing  the  duties  of  an  interpreter. 

It  was  not  all  cakes  and  beer  at  the  sign  of  the  White 
Horse,  however.  In  1644,  part  of  a  shipment  of  wine,  the 
whereabouts  of  which  became  a  subject  of  investigation  by 
the  authorities,  was  shown  to  have  found  its  way  to  Philip 
Geraerdy's  cellar ;  and  here,  too,  men  of  more  consideration 
than  the  general  run  of  his  customers  occasionally  resorted, 
such,  for  instance,  as  Jan  Damen,  the  thrifty  farmer  just  out  of 
town,  whose  well-managed  farm  lay  in  part  between  the  pres- 
ent Maiden  Lane  and  Wall  Street.  Philip  duly  appreciated 
such  clients,  and  when  Jan  Damen  became  unsteady  upon  his 
legs,  would  obligingly  see  him  home  when  the  road  was  dark. 
He  did  this  upon  one  occasion,  to  his  great  inconvenience,  as 
he  tells.  It  was  a  very  dark  night  in  the  spring  of  1643, 
when  they  reached  Jan  Damen's  farmhouse,  not  far  from  the 


THE  WHITE  HORSE  TAVERN 


11 


present  Pine  Street.  That  individual  seems  to  have  been  in  a 
rather  quarrelsome  mood,  for  Geraerdy  had  taken  the  precau- 
tion to  draw  his  guest's  sword  from  its  scabbard  and  to  carry 
it  himself.  At  the  house  they  found  Jan  Damen's  serving- 
man  in  a  very  unamiable  temper  at  being  waked  between  twelve 
and  one  o'clock,  and  he  threatened  to  shoot  his  employer. 
"  Finally,"  says  Philip,  "  the  above  Damen  and  his  servant 
Dirck  began  to  fight,  the  man  having  a  knife,  and  Jan  Damen 
a  scabbard,  over  which  Jan  Damen  fell  backwards,  deponent 
having  his  drawn  sword  in  his  hand  for  the  purpose  of  separat- 
ing them.  Jan  Damen  stood  up  and  jumped  into  the  house ; 
he  returned  immediately  with  a  knife,  and  as  it  was  very  dark, 
Jan  Damen  struck  deponent  under  the  shoulder-blade,"  etc.  — 
the  surgeon  declared  it  to  be  a  pretty  dangerous  wound. 

The  White  Horse  tavern  appears  to  have  been  a  pretty 
orderly  place,  upon  the  whole,  but  now  and  then  an  affray 
would  occur  there  to  enliven  the  town  ;  upon  one  of  these 
occasions,  the  majesty  of  the  Worshipful  West  India  Company 
was  seriously  affronted  in  the  person  of  Hendrick  van  Dyke, 
the  ensign  of  its  garrison,  who  was  afterwards  "  fiscal,"  or 
prosecuting  attorney  of  the  colony.  His  assailant  was  an 
individual  rather  obscurely  spoken  of  as  "Black  John,"  who, 
as  it  would  seem  from  his  remarks,  had  come  from  the  seaport 
of  Monnikendam,  a  few  miles  from  Amsterdam  on  the  Zuyder 
Zee.  Surgeon  V an  der  Bogaerdt  of  the  Company  describes 
the  courtly  flow  of  compliments  between  the  actors  in  the 
affair,  and  its  unexpected  ending.  He  says  that  "being  at  the 
house  of  Philip  Geraerdy,  he  heard  Black  John  say  to  Ensign 
Van  Dyk :  '  Brother,  my  service  to  you  ! '  to  which  the  ensign 
answered,  '  Brother,  I  thank  you.'  Instead  of  handing  over 
the  can,  Black  John  struck  the  ensign  with  the  can  on  the 
forehead,  so  that  the  blood  flowed,  saying  that  is  his  Monni- 
kendam  fashion,  and  then  threw  the  ensign  over  on  his  back  ; 
—  and  all  this  happened  without  their  having  any  dispute  or 
words  with  each  other." 

Philip  Geraerdy  throve  in  his  calling,  and  within  ten  or 
twelve  years  from  the  erection  of  the  little  tavern  upon  the 


12       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


corner,  he  had  built  a  new  house  for  his  own  residence,  in  his 
garden,  and  some  fifty  or  sixty  feet  down  Stone  Street.1  By 
that  time,  indeed,  he  may  have  rented  out  his  tavern,  for  in 
1653,  upon  occasion  of  aiding  in  a  loan  to  the  magistrates 
to  build  the  palisades  at  Wall  Street,  he  is  described  as  a 
"  trader,"  —  which  usually  indicated  a  person  who  was  doing 
a  little  bartering  with  the  Indians.  He  seems,  moreover,  to 
have  turned  his  thoughts  towards  acquiring  a  bouwery  upon 
Long  Island,  for  in  that  same  year  1653  he  received  (likely 
enough,  in  consideration  for  his  loan)  a  grant  of  some  fifty 
acres  of  fine  woodland,  sloping  down  gently  to  the  shore  of 
the  East  River,  a  short  distance  north  of  the  present  Astoria. 
His  plans,  whatever  they  may  have  been,  were  never  real- 
ized, for  he  died  in  1655.  His  widow  soon  married  Matthew 
de  Vos,  a  very  respectable  notary  of  the  colony.  Philip  left 
a  young  son,  Jean  or  Jan  Geraerdy,  to  whom  his  stepfather 
appears  to  have  been  a  careful  guardian.  They  resided  for  a 
number  of  years  upon  the  premises  in  Stone  Street,  but  after 
his  mother's  death,  Jean  Geraerdy  sold  the  property,  and  in 
1676  appears,  in  an  instrument  then  executed  by  him,  to  have 
been  a  resident  of  Rhode  Island.  Curiously  enough,  one  may 
see  his  name,  at  the  present  day,  in  the  Italianized  form  of 
Gerhardi,  in  immediate  proximity  to  its  original  location  in 
New  Amsterdam. 

1  This  building  appears  to  have  been  of  brick,  and  was  apparently  one  of  the 
best  in  New  Amsterdam,  for  it  was  sold  at  public  auction  on  the  9th  of  December, 
1672,  to  Captain  Thomas  Delavall,  for  5195  florins,  or  about  at  the  equivalent  of 
$2100  of  the  present  currency,  —  a  large  price  considering  the  value  of  money 
at  the  time,  and  the  ruling  prices  for  real  estate.  Delavall  soon  sold  the  property 
to  John  Ryder,  another  Englishman,  from  whom  it  was  purchased  in  1680  by 
Frederick  Phillipse,  Lord  of  the  Manor  of  Phillipsburgh  in  Westchester  County, 
who  owned  much  other  property  in  this  vicinity.  The  house  was  undoubtedly 
built  about  1653,  in  which  year  Frans  Jansen,  the  carpenter,  sued  Geraerdy  for 
the  work  done,  a  claim  which  the  latter  resisted  on  the  ground  that  the  contract 
for  work  on  the  garret  portion  of  the  building  "has  been  most  scandalously 
fulfilled." 


CHAPTER  II 


WINCKEL  STRAET,  AND  THE  HOUSE  OF  DOMINIE  BOGAR- 
DUS.—  THE  WEST  INDIA  COMPANY'S  STOREHOUSE.— 
SCHREYERS  HOEK 

Wat  bier  leeft  en  oyt  vergaderd 
Heeft  ziju  uur  en  stervens-tijd  : 
Wat  hier  (door  verselling)  naderd 
Ook  een  droevig-scheijdeu  leijd : 
Wat  in  vriendschap  is  verbonden, 
Door  verkiesing,  boven 't  bloed 
Word  te  recbt  wel  noyt  geschonden  ; 
't  Bij-zijn  nocbtans  broken  moet. 

Jacob  Steendam  :  "  Den  Distelvink." 

THE  lounger,  smoking  his  pipe  of  a  summer  evening 
upon  the  wooden  bench  in  front  of  the  White  Horse 
tavern,  at  the  period  of  which  we  have  been  speaking,  — 
about  the  year  1655,  —  looking  across  Brouwer  or  Stone 
Street,  would  have  seen  a  row  of  five  small  houses,  with 
their  gable  ends  to  the  Marck veldt,  or  Whitehall  Street,  and 
occupying  the  entire  front  between  Stone  and  Bridge  streets, 
now  covered  by  the  Kemble  Office  building.  These  houses 
did  not  front  upon  the  Marckveldt,  but  upon  a  small  lane 
parallel  with  it,  and  only  twenty-two  feet  in  width,  which 
was  known  as  Winckel  Straet.  At  the  back  of  the  houses 
were  small  gardens  or  enclosures,  which  opened  out  into  the 
Marckveldt.  These  buildings  seem  to  have  been  erected 
about  the  years  1645-46,  and  not  improbably  by  the  West 
India  Company  itself.  Allusion  has  already  been  made  to 
the  Company's  row  of  stone  shops  which  extended  from 
Stone  to  Bridge  Street,  and  which  was  intended  to  face  the 
broad  esplanade  of  the  fort.  After  the  Indian  troubles  had 
broken  out,  in  1643,  there  was  for  a  time  a  desire  on  the  part 


14      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


of  some  of  the  colonists  to  acquire  building  sites  under  the 
immediate  shelter  of  the  fort;  in  order  to  accommodate 
them  as  far  as  possible,  the  Company,  among  various  other 
provisions  for  their  aid,  determined  to  appropriate  a  portion 
of  the  esplanade  for  building  purposes.  The  narrow  Winckel 
Straet  was  therefore  laid  out  along  the  front  of  the  Com- 
pany's shops ;  and  upon  the  west  side  of  the  new  street  or 
lane  were  built  the  houses  referred  to. 

At  the  period  of  our  survey,  the  two  northernmost  of 
these  houses  were  owned,  as  to  the  one  next  to  Stone  Street, 
by  Hendrick  Jansen,  a  baker;  the  other  belonged  to  Maxi- 
milian van  Geele,  a  merchant  of  Amsterdam,  who  seems  to 
have  used  it  as  a  temporary  residence  in  the  Colony.  The 
two  southernmost  houses  belonged,  the  one  to  a  certain 
Caspar  Stymetz  (some  years  afterwards  it  became  of  in- 
terest as  then  belonging  to  the  English  Governor,  Colonel 
Lovelace,  and,  as  so  belonging,  having  been  plundered  and 
confiscated  by  the  Dutch  when  they  recaptured  New  Am- 
sterdam in  1673) ;  the  house  at  the  corner  of  Bridge  Street 
was  owned  by  an  Englishman,  George  Holmes,  the  pro- 
prietor of  the  solitary  tobacco  farm  at  Deutel,  or  "  Turtle  " 
Bay,  on  the  East  River,  who,  like  many  others  of  the  farmers 
at  this  time,  had  a  residence  within  the  town. 

The  middle  house  of  this  row,  however,  is  of  more  general 
interest,  as  having  been  the  last  place  of  residence  in  New 
Amsterdam  of  Dominie  Everardus  Bogardus,  usually  spoken 
of  (though  not  with  strict  accuracy)  as  the  first  minister  of 
the  Dutch  church  at  the  settlement. 

It  is  the  fortune  of  Dominie  Bogardus  that  his  name  shines 
with  a  somewhat  reflected  lustre  from  that  of  his  wife, 
Annetje  Janse,  of  wide  reputation,  —  the  energetic  lady  from 
whom  so  large  a  portion  of  the  population  of  New  York  and 
vicinity  claims  descent,  as  shown  in  the  various  Trinity 
Church  litigations. 

From  the  upper  windows  of  his  house,  looking  out  over 
the  Marckveldt,  Dominie  Bogardus  could  probably  have  seen, 
across  the  southeastern  bastion  of  Fort  Amsterdam,  the  roof 


ANNETJE  JANSE  BOGARDUS  15 


of  the  cottage  in  Pearl  Street  of  his  respected  mother-in-law, 
Catharine  or  "Tryn"  Jonas.  This  lady  had  long  occupied  a 
responsible  position  under  the  West  India  Company,  no  less, 
in  fact,  than  that  of  its  official  midwife,  —  the  thrifty  cor- 
poration going  so  far  as  to  make  this  provision  for  the  welfare 
of  its  colonists.  Tryn  Jonas  was  duly  sensible  of  the  dignity 
and  importance  of  her  office,  which  she  exercised  with  great 
independence,  even  to  the  extent  of  refusing  upon  various 
occasions  to  attend  certain  of  her  patients  with  whose  ante- 
cedents she  was  not  satisfied.  Her  daughter  Annetje  was 
married,  as  early  as  1626,  and  several  years  before  leaving 
Holland,  to  Roeloff  Jansen,  who  came  from  the  valley  of  the 
Meuse,  not  far  from  where  the  crowded  spires  of  Maestricht 
looked  over  the  complicated  girdle  of  bastions  and  ravelins 
and  lunettes  and  hornworks  which  encompassed  that  famed 
fortress. 

Reaching  the  Colony  in  1630,  Roeloff  Jansen  and  his  wife 
repaired  at  first  to  Fort  Orange,  or  Albany,  where,  in  ad- 
dition to  his  employment  as  an  agricultural  foreman  to  the 
patroon  Van  Rensselaer,  he  appears  to  have  entered  upon  a 
trading  business  with  the  Indians,  and  it  was  in  the  course 
of  his  expeditions  in  this  latter  capacity  that  his  name  was 
given  to  the  beautiful  stream  in  Columbia  County,  which 
still,  between  solitary  overhanging  woods,  ripples  as  merrily 
over  its  thick  bed  of  pebbles  as  when  it  was  first  named 
Roeloff  Jansen's  Kill. 

Prior  to  1636,  however,  Roeloff  Jansen  had  taken  up  his 
residence  in  New  Amsterdam,  and  acquired  a  tract  of  about 
sixty  acres  along  the  North  River,  where  it  formed  a  sort  of 
peninsula  between  the  river  and  the  swamps  which  then 
covered  the  sites  of  Canal  Street  and  West  Broadway.  Here 
he  had  probably  erected  a  small  farmhouse  upon  a  low  hill 
near  the  river  shore  at  about  the  present  Jay  Street;  but  he 
had  hardly  made  a  beginning  in  the  work  of  getting  his 
bouwery  under  cultivation  when  he  died,  leaving  to  his 
widow  Annetje  the  arduous  task  of  caring  for  a  family  of 
five  small  children,  in  a  colony  hardly  settled  as  yet. 


16      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


In  1633,  the  Reverend  Everardus  Bogardus  had  been  sent 
over  to  succeed  the  somewhat  interrupted  and  broken  min- 
istry of  Dominie  Jonas  Michaelis.  A  new  though  rather 
homely  church  had  been  built  for  him  upon  the  East  River 
shore,  or  upon  the  present  Pearl  Street,  between  Whitehall 
and  Broad  streets,  and  adjoining  it  was  the  parsonage.  The 
Dominie  was  an  unmarried  man,  and  lived  in  solitary  state 
at  the  parsonage  for  several  years,  drawing  his  rations  from 
the  West  India  Company,  like  the  rest  of  its  officials  and 
employes,  —  till  1638,  when  he  married  the  widow  Annetje 
Janse  (or  Roeloffse,  as  she  is  called,  indifferently,  following 
the  Dutch  fashion),  after  a  marriage  settlement  which  is 
still  extant  had  been  drawn  up,  providing  for  the  securing 
to  her  first  husband's  children  the  sum  of  200  guilders 
each. 

Thus,  in  addition  to  his  clerical  duties,  the  Dominie  as- 
sumed the  cares  of  a  landed  proprietor,  not  only  with  regard 
to  the  North  River  farm,  —  which  soon  became  known  as  "  the 
Dominie's  Bouwery,"  —  but  also  as  to  another  and  less  con- 
venient tract  which  he  and  his  wife  had  acquired.  This  was 
situated  some  three  or  four  miles  up  the  East  River,  where, 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Mespat  Kill,  two  or  three  low  hillocks  of 
ground  rose  out  of  the  surrounding  marshes,  then  much 
sought  for  on  account  of  their  supply  of  salt  hay  for  the 
cattle.  This  tract,  which  covered  about  one  hundred  and 
thirty  acres  of  upland  and  meadow,  the  Dominie  had  leased 
out  as  early  as  the  summer  of  1642,  though  no  house  was 
erected  upon  it  as  yet.  The  locality,  which,  graded  down  to 
a  few  feet  above  the  water  level,  is  now  occupied  by  the 
dismal  suburb  sometimes  called  Hunter's  Point,  soon  acquired 
the  name  of  "Dominie's  Hoek,"  and  has  been  constantly 
confounded  by  writers  upon  New  Amsterdam  with  the  North 
River  bouwery,  some  of  them  going  so  far,  in  order  to  make 
it  fit  in  with  their  theories,  as  to  supply  the  name  of  Mespat 
Kill  to  the  sluggish  little  rill  flowing  through  the  swamps 
along  Canal  Street. 

In  the  year  1642  it  was  determined  to  build  a  new  and 


THE  HOUSE  OF  DOMINIE  BOGARDUS  IT 


substantial  church  within  the  walls  of  the  fort.  The  mo- 
tives for  this  change  of  location  are  undoubtedly  to  be  found 
in  the  apprehension  of  Indian  troubles,  too  well  justified  by 
the  event.  The  new  church  proceeded  rather  slowly  in 
building,  but  within  two  or  three  years  services  were  held  in 
it  in  its  unfinished  condition.  The  old  church  and  the  par- 
sonage were  then  converted  to  other  uses,  and  Dominie 
Bogardus  appears  to  have  purchased  for  himself  the  new 
house  on  the  Winckel  Straet  to  which  reference  has  been 
made. 

Here  the  Dominie  spent  the  closing  years  of  his  ministry. 
His  riding  mare  duly  saddled  and  bridled,  and  brought  down 
from  the  North  River  bouwery,  where  her  pasturage  was 
provided  for  with  great  care  in  the  lease  to  the  tenants,  was 
probably  a  familiar  sight  in  the  Marckveldt,  as  she  stood  at 
her  owner's  back  gate  (just  on  the  spot  where  the  main 
entrance  now  is  to  the  Kemble  Building),  waiting  for  him  to 
set  out  on  his  pastoral  visits  about  the  town,  and  to  a  number 
of  rude  farmhouses  in  their  half -cleared  bouwerys,  for  two 
or  three  miles  up  the  island. 

A  good  deal  of  the  life  of  the  little  community  centred 
around  the  house  of  Dominie  Bogardus ;  on  the  opposite  side 
of  the  Winckel  Straet  was  the  noise  and  stir  of  the  workmen 
in  the  Company's  shops ;  on  the  other  side  of  his  house  was 
the  Marckveldt,  where  the  country  people  came  with  their 
butter  and  eggs  and  poultry  and  vegetables,  and  now  and 
then  an  Indian  was  to  be  seen  with  game  or  fish.  A  little 
beyond,  on  the  right,  where  Bowling  Green  now  is,  the  sol- 
diers of  the  garrison  held  their  drills,  or  lounged  the  time 
away  on  pleasant  days  when  off  duty.  A  little  more  than  a 
block  away,  down  the  Marckveldt,  to  the  left,  was  the  shore 
of  the  East  River  and  the  small  public  dock  with  its  crane 
for  hoisting  merchandise  to  or  from  the  lighters,  and,  lying 
at  anchor  beyond,  could  generally  be  seen  the  vessels  in 
port. 

Between  the  Dominie's  house  and  the  shore  was  a  building 
which  seems  to  have  occupied  most  of  the  Marckveldt  front 

2 


18       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


on  the  east  side,  between  Bridge  and  Pearl  streets.  This 
was  the  storehouse  of  the  West  India  Company;  its  exact 
site  is  uncertain,  but  it  must  have  stood  upon  ground  now 
embraced  in  Whitehall  Street,  for  in  the  grant,  in  1646,  by 
Director  Kieft  to  Doctor  Hans  Kiersted,  of  the  lot  which  is 
known  to  have  been  the  present  northeast  corner  of  Pearl 
and  Whitehall  streets,  it  is  described  as  having  to  the  west 
"the  Company's  Warehouse  on  the  Strand."  The  edifice 
can  be  readily  distinguished  in  the  Justus  Danckers'  View 
of  New  Amsterdam,  forming  the  frontispiece  of  this  work. 
A  building  for  this  purpose,  and  upon  this  site,  was  probably 
one  of  the  earliest  erected  by  the  Company;  and  as  such  a 
structure  would  naturally  be  of  a  substantial  character,  we 
are  led  to  infer  that  the  first  building  must  have  been  burned 
or  accidentally  destroyed,  for  in  a  report  made  in  1638  it  is 
stated  that  "  the  place  where  the  public  store  stood  can  with 
difficulty  be  discovered. "  It  must  have  been  rebuilt  soon  after 
1638,  however,  for  in  1640,  many  complaints  of  overcharges  * 
having  been  made  by  the  people,  the  Council  ordered  that  a 
board  containing  the  prices  current  should  be  kept  in  a  con- 
spicuous position  at  the  store.  This  building,  however,  seems 
to  have  ceased  to  be  used  for  store  or  warehouse  purposes 
soon  after  the  advent  of  Director-General  Stuyvesant,  when 
a  new  and  larger  structure  appears  to  have  been  erected  as  a 
public  store,  or  "pack-huys,"  — and  used  at  the  same  time  by 
the  government  as  a  custom-house.  This  latter  building,  of 
which  further  notice  will  be  taken,1  stood  upon  the  north  side 
of  Pearl  Street  a  short  distance  east  of  the  old  storehouse. 

The  architecture  of  the  old  building  was  of  the  simplest 
character,  and  the  purposes  for  which  it  was  used  in  its  later 
years  are  not  known ;  it  was  in  all  probability  removed  within 
a  short  period  as  an  obstruction  to  the  thoroughfare  of  the 
Marckveldt. 

To  the  right  or  west  of  the  Marckveldt,  and  a  short  dis- 
tance beyond  where  it  terminated  upon  the  shore  of  the  East 
River,  was  a  low  bank  of  land  projecting  out  to  a  point  the 

1  See  page  52,  post. 


SCHREYERS  HOEK 


19 


site  of  which  is  now  in  the  Battery  Park,  a  short  distance 
north  of  the  Staten  Island  Ferry-house.  This  was  the 
Capske,  — the  "cape,"  or  "point,"  —  being  the  southern  ter- 
mination of  Manhattan  Island;  but  it  was  more  generally 
known  in  Dominie  Bogardus's  time  as  "Schreyers  Hoek." 

The  sojourner  at  Amsterdam,  strolling  down  one  of  the  lines 
of  street  bordering  the  broad  stream  of  the  Amstel  as  it  winds 
through  that  city,  comes  out  upon  a  point  of  land  projecting 
a  short  distance  into  the  harbor,  at  the  right  of  the  river's 
mouth.  Near  it  stands  a  venerable  old  battlemented  tower 
of  stone,  with  its  roof  thrown  up  into  a  high  conical  peak  of 
curious  form.  Here,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  the  Dutch 
emigrants  and  their  families  usually  embarked  in  small  boats 
to  reach  the  East  Indiamen  or  other  vessels  which  lay  in  the 
harbor,  a  short  distance,  out  beyond  the  curving  double  line 
of  "  booms  "  near  the  shore.  Here,  too,  their  relatives  and 
friends  were  wont  to  assemble  to  take  their  last  leave  of 
those  who  were  bound  for  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  globe, 

—  for  Ceylon  and  Batavia,  for  Brazil  and  New  Netherland, 

—  and  whom  in  most  cases  they  never  expected  to  see  again 
upon  earth.  From  the  natural  scenes  of  grief  displayed  upon 
these  occasions,  the  locality  acquired  the  name  of  Schreyers 
Hoek,  "the  Weepers'  Point,"  and  the  tower  still  retains  the 
name  of  Schreyers  Hoek  Tooren.  Amsterdam  influences 
prevailed  in  New  Netherland,  and  the  point  of  land  near  the 
public  dock,  on  which  the  people  of  New  Amsterdam  were 
accustomed  to  gather  upon  the  important  occasion  of  the 
sailing  of  a  vessel  for  Holland,  to  wave  their  farewells  to 
friends  returning  to  the  old  country,  naturally  acquired  the 
name  of  the  similarly  situated  locality  at  Amsterdam,  just 
referred  to,  and  became  known  also  as  Schreyers  Hoek. 

Upon  this  point  of  land  was  to  have  been  seen,  a  short  time 
prior  to  the  period  of  our  survey,  in  1655,  a  deserted  cabin, 
and  near  it,  upon  the  shore,  was  drawn  up  a  warped  and 
decaying  catboat.  These  were  the  property  of  one  Thomas 
Baxter,  an  Englishman  who,  falling  out  with  the  Dutch 
authorities,  had  abandoned  his  possessions  here  and  taken 


20      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


refuge  in  New  England,  where,  upon  occasion  of  the  war 
between  the  English  Commonwealth  and  the  Netherlands  in 
1653,  he  took  out  so-called  letters  of  marque  from  the  little 
Colony  of  Rhode  Island,  which  asserted  thus  early  its  dignity. 
With  a  small  armed  vessel  he  pestered  the  Dutch  greatly, 
and  captured  two  or  three  of  their  ships.  His  property  on 
the  Schreyers  Hoek  was  confiscated,  and  upon  its  site, 
greatly  raised  by  rilling  in,  was  built  Director-General 
Stuyvesant's  residence,  which  afterwards  became  known  as 
"The  White  Hall,"  part  of  the  ground  of  which  is  now 
occupied  by  the  large  and  somewhat  antiquated-looking 
brick  building  at  the  corner  of  State  and  Whitehall  streets. 
There  are  some  reasons  to  suspect  that  this  name  was  derived 
from  the  old  palace  of  Whitehall  at  Westminster,  at  that 
time  in  its  last  days,  and  that  it  was  given  rather  derisively 
by  the  English  to  Director-General  Stuyvesant's  not  very 
imposing  mansion. 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  WEST  INDIA  COMPANY  AND  ITS  COLONIAL  OFFI- 
CERS.—THE  QUARREL  BETWEEN  DIRECTOR  KIEFT  AND 
DOMINIE  BOGARDUS.—  THE  WRECK  OF  THE  "PRINCESS" 


Who  holds  the  reins  upon  you  ? 

The  latest  gale  set  free. 
What  meat  is  in  your  mangers  ? 

The  glut  of  all  the  sea. 
'Twixt  tide  and  tide's  returning 
Great  store  of  newly  dead,  — 
The  bones  of  those  that  faced  us, 
And  the  hearts  of  those  that  fled. 

Kipling:  "White  Horses." 


0  sketch  of  Dominie  Bogardus  would  be  complete 


X  ^1  without  some  reference  to  the  disputes  between  him 
and  the  Director  Kieft,  which  occupied  the  closing  years  of 
the  Dominie's  ministry  at  New  Amsterdam. 

The  Dutch  West  India  Company,  which  at  one  time  gave 
promise  of  becoming  one  of  the  greatest  trading  corporations 
ever  organized,  —  which  as  early  as  1626  had  a  fleet  of 
seventy-three  vessels,  many  of  them  armed,  at  its  disposal; 
and  which  claimed  or  actually  occupied,  not  only  the  vast 
territories  of  Brazil,  but  immense  tracts  of  land  upon  the 
coasts  of  Africa,  besides  New  Netherland,  and  its  possessions 
in  the  West  Indies,  —  was  frequently  unfortunate  in  the 
administrative  officers  of  its  colonies.  These  men,  usually 
advanced  through  various  gradations  from  clerks'  desks  in 
the  historic  buildings  upon  the  Haerlemmer  Straet  and  on 
the  Y-Graft,  in  Amsterdam,  which  were  successively  the  head- 
quarters of  the  West  India  Company,  were  often  entirely 
lacking  in  the  qualities  essential  to  a  successful  magistracy. 


22       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Relieved  from  the  personal  supervision  of  the  general  officers 
of  the  Company,  and  with  extensive  powers  conferred  upon 
them  over  the  new  settlers,  they  became  veritable  Sancho 
Panzas  in  the  colonies.  Of  these,  perhaps  the  worst  speci- 
men was  Willem  Kieft,  Director-General  at  New  Amsterdam 
from  1638  to  1647. 

It  is  somewhat  difficult  to  describe  the  character  of  this 
man,  or  to  decide  which  was  its  leading  trait,  —  his  hypoc- 
risy, his  self-importance,  his  administrative  incapacity,  or  the 
rancorous  venom  of  his  disposition  towards  his  opponents. 
He  had,  in  fact,  all  of  the  offensive  qualities  of  his  successor, 
Director  Stuyvesant,  without  the  tenacity  of  purpose  and 
will  of  the  latter.  He  was  perhaps  more  thoroughly  hated 
and  despised  by  all  classes  of  the  community  than  any  other 
inhabitant  of  New  Netherland.  Moreover,  he  was  as  sensi- 
tive to  criticism  upon  his  official  acts  as  are  most  small-minded 
men  placed  in  positions  of  considerable  power,  and,  like  such 
individuals,  he  was  prone  to  look  upon  the  least  animadver- 
sion upon  his  conduct,  or  upon  any  doubts  expressed  in  rela- 
tion to  the  wisdom  of  his  administrative  policy,  as  "  treason  " 
of  the  most  glaring  description. 

The  motives  which  impelled  Kieft  to  order  the  cruel  mas- 
sacre of  the  Weckquaskeek  Indians,  in  1643,  are  not  fully 
known,  but  seem  to  have  been,  in  considerable  measure, 
owing  to  a  desire  of  obtaining  easy  possession  of  the  lands 
occupied  by  them.  That  tribe,  fleeing  before  a  raid  of  their 
dreaded  enemies,  the  Mohawks  of  the  north,  abandoned  their 
village  on  the  Hudson  River  near  the  present  Hastings,  in 
Westchester  County,  and  came  in  the  depth  of  winter  to 
Manhattan  Island,  and  to  Pavonia  on  the  west  side  of  the 
Hudson  River,  where  they  encamped  in  a  very  destitute  and 
starving  condition.  Their  pitiable  plight  excited  the  com- 
miseration of  many  of  the  Dutch,  who  furnished  them  with 
food.  Not  so  with  Kieft,  however;  to  him  it  appeared  only 
as  a  good  opportunity,  prepared  by  Providence,  to  make  the 
savages  "wipe  their  chops,"  —  as  he  feelingly  expressed  it, 
—  to  settle  up  old  scores,  and  by  exterminating  the  Indians 


KIEFT'S  INDIAN  POLICY 


23 


to  facilitate  the  expansion  of  the  Colony;  and  his  famous 
order  was  issued  accordingly :  — 

"  February  25th,  1643.  We  authorize  Maryn  Andriessen, 
at  his  request,  with  his  associates  to  attack  a  party  of  savages 
skulking  behind  Corlaers  Hook  or  plantation,  and  act  with 
them  in  such  a  manner  as  they  shall  deem  proper  and  the 
time  and  opportunity  will  permit.  Sergeant  Rodolf  is  com- 
manded to  take  a  troop  of  soldiers  and  lead  them  to  Pavonia, 
there  to  drive  away  and  destroy  the  savages  lying  near  Jan 
Evertsen's,  but  to  spare  as  much  as  possible  their  wives  and 
children  and  take  them  prisoners.  Hans  Stein,  who  is  well 
acquainted  with  the  haunts  of  the  Indians,  is  to  go  with  him. 
The  exploit  should  be  executed  at  night  with  the  greatest 
caution  and  prudence.    God  bless  the  expedition!  " 

Captain  David  de  Vries,  sitting  by  the  fire  in  the  Director's 
kitchen  at  the  fort  that  cold  winter's  night,  and  anxiously 
awaiting  the  results  of  the  "exploit,"  to  which  he  was  vio- 
lently opposed,  tells  the  rest :  — 

"At  midnight  I  heard  loud  shrieks,  and  went  out  to  the 
parapet  of  the  fort  and  looked  towards  Pavonia.  I  saw 
nothing  but  the  flashing  of  the  guns.  I  heard  no  more  the 
cries  of  the  Indians." 

More  than  a  hundred  Indians  —  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren—  were  killed  by  these  two  parties;  they  were  merely 
butchered  in  cold  blood,  for  they  were  completely  taken  by 
surprise, —  even  to  the  extent  of  imagining  at  first  that  they 
were  assailed  by  their  enemies,  the  Mohawks;  and  they  made 
scarcely  any  resistance.  "No  barbarity,"  says  Valentine, 
"was  too  shocking  to  be  inflicted  upon  them." 

The  natural  consequences  of  such  an  act  as  this  followed 
swiftly.  Most  of  the  outlying  farms  around  New  Amster- 
dam were  devastated,  and  the  settlers  slain  or  carried  into 
captivity,  by  the  enraged  Indians.  There  were  but  few  of 
the  inhabitants  of  New  Netherland  who  did  not  severely 
suffer,  either  directly  or  indirectly,  by  this  foolhardy  and 
cruel  policy  of  Kieft,  and  he  and  his  advisers  were  bitterly 
attacked  by  all  classes  of  the  community  in  consequence. 


24      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Among  the  most  outspoken  of  their  antagonists  was  Dominie 
Bogardus,  who,  as  Valentine  says,  "fulminated  against 
them  in  the  pulpit  until  he  fairly  drove  them  out  of  the 
congregation." 

There  is  considerable  evidence  that  the  Dominie  was  of  a 
rather  convivial  disposition,  though  it  is  not  to  be  believed 
that  he  was  guilty  of  anything  like  the  excesses  with  which 
Kieft  afterwards  charged  him.  It  was  at  the  wedding  of 
Magdalena  Verdon  to  Adam  Brouwer,  a  young  soldier  from 
Cologne,  in  the  employ  of  the  West  India  Company,  on 
March  21,  1645,  that  the  Dominie  made  some  public  remarks 
of  a  rather  personal  nature  respecting  Kieft,  which  seem  to 
have  induced  that  individual  to  open  fire,  as  it  were,  upon 
his  reverend  opponent.  Two  days  afterwards,  accordingly, 
he  sent  the  clergyman  what  he  calls  "a  Christian  admonition," 
—  which  the  latter  declined  to  receive,  and  proceeded  with 
his  denunciations  of  Kieft  and  his  policy.  At  last,  on  the  2d 
of  January,  1646,  Kieft  issued  his  final  and  celebrated  mani- 
festo, beginning  in  the  imposing  form :  "  In  the  name  of  the 
Lord,  Amen!  The  Honorable  Director  and  Council,  to  the 
Reverend  Everardus  Bogardus,  Minister  of  the  Gospel  in 
this  place."  Though  couched  in  this  official  form,  the  whole 
proceeding  is  transparently  the  work  of  Kieft  personally. 
As  his  grievances  consisted,  in  large  measure,  in  Dominie 
Bogardus's  public  criticisms  upon  his  administrative  acts,  he 
opens  his  manifesto,  with  fine  relevancy,  by  attacking  the 
Dominie's  personal  habits,  critically  distinguishing  the  acts 
which  he  had  done,  for  the  six  or  seven  years  preceding, 
when  "pretty  drunk,"  from  those  performed  when  "thor- 
oughly drunk."  He  then  proceeds  to  animadvert  upon 
Dominie  Bogardus's  conduct  in  regard  to  certain  matters  of 
church  discipline,  about  which  Kieft  had  as  much  concern  as 
the  drummer  of  the  garrison.  Gradually  getting  to  the  gist 
of  the  matter,  he  reminds  the  clergyman  of  his  remarks  in  a 
sermon  preached  by  him  a  short  time  before,  in  which  he  had 
alluded  to  certain  monsters  of  the  tropics,  —  "  but  you  know 
not,  said  you,  from  whence,  in  such  a  temperate  clime  as 


KIEFT'S  MANIFESTO 


25 


this,  such  monsters  of  men  are  produced.  They  are  the 
mighty  ones  who  place  their  confidence  in  men,  and  not  in 
the  Lord!  Children  might  have  told  to  whom  you  alluded." 
Having  thus  shown  how  aptly  he  felt  these  remarks,  as  well 
as  certain  others  of  which  he  complained,  to  have  applied  to 
himself,  the  Director  proceeds  to  business :  "  All  these  things 
being  regarded  by  us  as  having  a  tendency  towards  the 
general  ruin  of  the  country,  both  Church  and  State  being 
endangered  where  the  magistrate  is  despised,  and  it  being 
considered  that  your  duty  and  oath  imperatively  demand 
their  proper  maintenance ;  whereas  your  conduct  stirs  up  the 
people  (already  too  much  divided)  to  mutiny  and  rebellion, 
.  .  .  our  sacred  duty  demanded  that  we  seek  out  a  remedy 
against  this  evil;  and  this  remedy  we  now  intend  to  employ, 
in  virtue  of  our  high  commission  from  the  Company,  and  we 
design  to  prosecute  you  in  a  court  of  justice ;  and  to  do  it  in 
due  form  we  made  an  order  that  a  copy  of  these  our  delibera- 
tions should  be  delivered  to  you  to  answer  in  fourteen  days, 
protesting  that  we  intend  to  treat  you  with  such  Christian 
lenity  as  our  conscience  and  the  welfare  of  State  and  Church 
shall  in  any  way  permit." 

The  papers  presenting  Dominie  Bogardus's  side  of  this 
controversy  have  all  perished,  but  it  is  very  evident  that  he 
stoutly  maintained  his  ground,  and  goaded  his  small-minded 
antagonist  into  a  state  of  fury  with  each  successive  rejoinder 
he  made.  He  lost  no  time  in  replying  to  the  document  above 
set  forth,  by  a  communication  which  Kieft  characterized 
as  "useless  and  absurd,  as  not  answering  in  any  respect  the 
charges  conveyed  to  said  Bogardus  on  the  2d  January,  1646. 
Wherefore  it  is  decreed  that  said  Bogardus  shall,  within  the 
time  limited,  answer  precisely  the  contents  of  that  paper  in 
an  affirmative  or  negative  manner,  under  penalty  that  action 
be  taken  against  him  as  a  rebel  and  contumax." 

Dominie  Bogardus  soon  sent  in  a  further  reply  to  the 
Director  which  was  still  less  to  his  liking  than  the  former 
one,  for  upon  the  18th  of  January,  1646,  he  caused  an  entry 
to  be  made  in  the  Council  Minutes,  in  which  he  characterized 


26       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


"a  certain  paper  of  Reverend  Bogardus,"  sent  to  him  by  that 
gentleman  through  the  court  messenger,  as  "filled  with  use- 
less subterfuges,  calumnies,  and  injuries,  besides  with  a 
profanation  of  God's  holy  word,  and  designed  to  vilify  His 
magistrates,  of  which  said  Reverend  Bogardus,  according  to 
his  custom,  makes  use  to  obscure  the  truth,  and  not  at  all 
answering  our  griefs  and  charges." 

This  paper  warfare  of  legal  threats  on  the  one  hand,  and 
of  apparent  denunciation  and  defiance  on  the  other,  was  kept 
up  for  several  months;  Dominie  Bogardus  evidently  deny- 
ing the  jurisdiction  of  the  Director  and  his  Council  to  try  the 
cause  against  him,  and  Kieft  being  apparently  not  sure  of 
his  ground,  and  living  in  the  constant  fear  of  afterclaps  from 
the  home  government.  In  the  mean  time  the  Dominie  was 
harassed  by  a  sort  of  flank  attack  in  the  shape  of  a  suit  for 
slander  brought  against  him  by  Oloff:  Stevensen  van  Cort- 
landt,  a  deacon  of  his  church  and  a  prominent  citizen  of  New 
Amsterdam.  This  latter  proceeding,  however,  was  not  so 
much  the  work  of  Oloff  Stevensen  as  of  Kieft  himself,  — 

"  Iago  hurt  him, 
Iago  set  him  on,"  — 

and  finally,  by  the  mutual  good  offices  of  several  of  the 
leading  men  of  the  community,  a  reconciliation  was  brought 
about  between  the  Dominie  and  his  deacon. 

During  the  spring  and  summer  of  1646,  the  Dominie  and 
the  Director- General,  looking  across  the  Marckveldt,  might 
perhaps  have  often  seen  one  another  sitting  at  their  open 
windows  upon  fine  days,  engaged  in  writing  their  mutual 
diatribes;  but  with  the  latter  period  came  a  change,  for  it 
was  known  then  that  Kieft' s  official  days  were  numbered, 
and  that  a  new  Director  and  Council  were  to  be  appointed. 
The  prosecution  of  Dominie  Bogardus  seems  to  have  re- 
mained in  abeyance  for  a  time,  and  to  have  finally  taken  the 
form  of  charges  preferred  against  him  to  the  Classis  of 
Amsterdam,  but  of  their  precise  nature  we  are  ignorant. 


THE  SHIP  "  PRINCESS  " 


27 


The  latter  part  of  the  summei  of  1647  was  a  period  of  much 
activity  in  New  Amsterdam.  Out  in  the  East  River,  a  little 
way  from  the  shore,  the  ship  "Princess  "  lay  at  anchor,  soon 
to  sail  for  Amsterdam  with  a  heavy  passenger  list.  Kieft  and 
one  or  two  of  his  late  advisers  were  to  return  to  the  Nether- 
lands with  the  formidable  task  before  them  of  explaining  to 
the  Directors  of  the  West  India  Company  the  justice  and 
expediency  of  his  recent  measures  with  the  Indians.  He  had 
succeeded,  at  the  first  coming  of  Director- General  Stuyve- 
sant,  in  poisoning  the  mind  of  the  latter  against  several  of 
his,  Kieft's,  principal  opponents,  and  two  or  three  of  them 
had  been  heavily  fined  and  banished  from  the  Colony ;  in  this 
number  were  Captain  Jochem  Pietersen  Kuyter  and  Cornelis 
Melyn,  —  two  able  and  determined  men,  of  whom  further 
notice  will  be  taken  hereafter;  they  were  now  making  ready 
for  the  voyage,  with  all  their  detestation  of  Kieft  transferred 
to  his  successor,  and  fully  prepared  to  renew  the  battle  before 
the  States-General.  With  them  and  in  close  sympathy,  went 
Dominie  Bogardus  to  meet  Kieft's  charges  before  the  ecclesi- 
astical tribunal.  Among  the  passengers,  too,  was  Hendrick 
Jansen,  a  tailor,  whose  coarse  but  vigorous  denunciations  of 
Kieft  had  stirred  up  the  latter  to  procure  his  banishment  also. 
Besides  these  there  were  merchants  and  traders  returning  to 
buy  goods  at  Amsterdam,  among  whom  was  Simon  Dircksen 
Pos,  one  of  the  pioneer  Indian  traders  in  New  Netherland. 
Several  of  the  servants  of  the  West  India  Company,  whose 
terms  of  employment  had  expired,  were  also  among  the  pas- 
sengers, as  were  also  some  of  the  colonists,  who,  their  prop- 
erties having  been  destroyed  during  the  Indian  troubles,  had 
given  up  the  struggle  and  were  now  only  anxious  to  get  back 
with  their  families  to  the  old  country. 

Many  of  these  passengers  were  intrusted  with  various 
commissions  by  their  friends  remaining  behind,  and  the  Sec- 
retary of  the  Colony  was  kept  unusually  busy  in  registering 
powers  of  attorney  or  "procurations"  to  collect  debts,  to 
receive  legacies,  to  make  purchases,  to  settle  litigations, 
and  to  transact  other  similar  business  in  various  parts  of 


28      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Europe.  Along  the  water-side  the  porters  of  the  Company 
were  actively  employed  in  transferring  bales  of  furs  and  of 
tobacco,  with  other  articles  of  freight,  from  the  Company's 
pack-huys,  to  the  little  dock  near  the  foot  of  the  present 
Whitehall  Street,  and  thence  by  lighter  to  the  "Princess." 
Among  the  articles  shipped,  too,  was  the  wonderful  white 
beaver-skin  tipped  with  yellow;  this  sport  of  nature  had 
been  brought  in  by  an  Indian,  and  was  now  sent  over  to  the 
Netherlands  as  an  unheard  of  rarity.  There  was  also  Kieft's 
collection,  made  for  the  West  India  Company,  of  about  a 
hundred  specimens  of  the  minerals  of  New  Netherland,  con- 
spicuous among  which  were  the  various  pieces  of  pyrites 
which  he  had  obtained  to  the  west  of  Hudson  River,  and 
which  he  believed  to  contain  gold.  Much  more  valuable 
than  these  was  a  number  of  "very  exact  maps  and  accounts 
of  New  Netherland,"  which  would  have  been  now  of  almost 
priceless  value. 

Finally,  when  the  last  chests  and  packages  were  shipped 
and  the  last  passengers  had  gone  on  board,  the  ship's  anchor 
was  weighed  amidst  the  ringing  of  the  church  bells  and  the 
firing  of  cannon  from  the  fort;  the  last  farewells  were  waved 
between  the  passengers  on  the  vessel  and  the  crowd  on 
Schreyers  Hoek,  and  the  "Princess"  sailed  down  the  harbor 
on  the  17th  of  August,  1647,  long  watched  from  the  shore 
as  she  receded  through  the  heavily  wooded  shores  of  the 
Narrows.  Many  weeks  passed  before  any  further  tidings  of 
her  reached  New  Amsterdam. 

On  the  southern  coast  of  Wales,  at  the  mouth  of  a  broad 
valley  sloping  down  from  the  "  Black  Mountains  "  of  Breck- 
nock and  Carmarthen  shires,  lies  the  old  town  of  Swansea, 
upon  what  is  thought  by  many  to  be  the  most  beautiful  spot 
upon  the  coast  of  the  English  island.  Walter  Savage  Landor 
gave  it  the  preference,  in  an  artistic  point  of  view,  to  the  Bay 
of  Naples.  Here,  looking  seaward  upon  a  fine  day,  over 
the  steely-blue  waters  of  the  Bristol  Channel,  the  Exmoor 
Hills,  and  beyond  them  the  mountains  of  Devonshire  are 
seen  in  the  far  distance  across  the  broad  estuary,  where 


WRECK  OF  THE  "PRINCESS" 


29 


"Silent,  majestical,  and  slow, 
The  white  ships  hover  to  and  fro, 
With  all  their  ghostly  sails  unfurled, 
As  beings  from  another  world 

Haunt  the  dim  confines  of  existence." 

From  the  town  westward  the  shore  of  yellow  sand  curves  in 
a  bold,  semicircular  sweep,  not  unlike  that  of  the  Bay  of 
Naples,  and  ends  in  the  massive  limestone  rocks  known  as 
"The  Mumbles,"  now  crowned  by  a  lighthouse  of  elegant 
form.  Looking  landwards,  the  valleys  stretching  inland  are 
seen  to  be  separated  by  massive  spurs  of  the  mountains  of 
Wales,  which  terminate  abruptly  above  the  beach.  Here,  to 
many  of  the  passengers  and  crew  of  the  "Princess,"  was  their 
journey's  end, 

"  And  very  sea-mark  of  their  utmost  sail." 

The  captain  of  the  vessel  missed  his  reckoning  in  a  violent 
September  gale,  and  ran  up  the  Bristol  Channel.  The  ship 
was  thrown  upon  the  rocks  near  Swansea,  and  soon  went  to 
pieces;  of  about  one  hundred  persons  on  board,  eighty 
perished,  among  whom  were  Kieft  and  Dominie  Bogardus, 
—  all  their  dissensions  being  terminated  by  the  Great 
Arbitrator. 

After  the  death  of  her  husband,  New  Amsterdam  seems 
to  have  become  distasteful  to  Annetje  Janse  Bogardus,  and 
about  the  end  of  1647  she  and  her  family  removed  to  Fort 
Orange,  or  Albany,  where  she  had  spent  some  of  her  earlier 
years,  and  where  she  purchased  a  house  and  garden  spot  at 
the  northeast  corner  of  Middle  Lane  (now  James  Street),  and 
Joncker  or  the  present  State  Street;  here  she  died  in  1663. 
The  Dominie's  house  on  the  Winckel  Straet  and  the  Marck- 
veldt  in  New  Amsterdam  was  retained  by  his  family  for  a 
number  of  years ;  and  about  the  period  of  our  survey,  in  1655, 
it  seems  to  have  been  occupied  by  a  tenant,  Warner  Wessells, 
a  man  of  some  prominence  in  the  town  who  purchased  it  a 
year  or  two  afterwards.  The  quiet  street  leading  up  the  hill 
at  Albany,  upon  which  Annetje  Bogardus  dwelt,  has  now 


30      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


become  a  broad  and  busy  thoroughfare,  over  which  the 
crowds  passing  to  and  from  the  Capitol  travel  daily,  and  a 
bronze  tablet  upon  the  Mechanics  and  Farmers  Savings  Bank 
at  that  place  marks  the  site  of  her  house ;  but  nothing  per- 
petuates the  memory  of  the  dwelling  in  New  Amsterdam 
where  she  and  her  husband,  calumniated  and  harassed  by 
their  malicious  and  unscrupulous  enemy,  passed  many  dark 
and  stormy  hours.1 

1  It  is  understood,  however,  that  steps  have  been  very  recently  taken  towards 
having  a  commemorative  tablet  erected  upon,  or  very  near  to,  the  site  of  Dominie 
Bogardus's  house  in  Whitehall  Street. 


CHAPTER  IV 


"THE  FIVE  STONE  HOUSES."  —  THE  BRUGH  STEEGH,  OR 
BRIDGE  LANE.  — THE  BREWERY  OF  THE  WEST  INDIA 
COMPANY.  — PIETER  CORNELISSEN  AND  HIS  GARDEN. 
—  HENDRICK  KIP,  THE  TAILOR 

/^\N  the  east  side  of  the  Winckel  Straet,  to  which  pre- 


V^/  vious  reference  has  been  made,  stood  five  stone  build- 
ings, of  probably  two  or  three  stories  hi  height.  These  are 
usually  misnamed,  by  writers  upon  New  Amsterdam,  "The 
Company's  Storehouses ; "  they  were,  however,  in  no  sense 
storehouses,  except  in  so  far  as  they  may  have  served  to  store 
materials  for  the  work  which  was  carried  on  there.  They 
were  in  fact  used  as  workshops  for  the  various  branches  of 
labor  conducted  under  the  direction  of  the  oflicers  of  the  West 
India  Company,  and  seem  to  have  contained  the  shops  of  the 
carpenter,  the  blacksmith,  the  cooper,  and  the  armorer  of  the 
Company,  with  probably  others,  such  as  those  of  the  tailor, 
the  shoemaker,  the  hatter,  etc.,  for  the  garrison  and  for  the 
other  employes  of  that  economical  corporation,  which  aimed 
at  supplying,  through  its  own  workmen,  most  of  the  wants 
of  its  servants.  Perhaps  the  most  singular  appurtenance  of 
the  Five  Houses  was  a  goathouse  in  their  rear,  which  was 
built  in  Director  Van  Twiller's  time,  as  we  are  informed  by 
an  entry  in  the  records,  in  1639. 

Of  the  precise  date  of  the  erection  of  these  buildings  we 
are  ignorant,  but  it  must  have  been  very  early,  for  in  1638 
we  are  told  that  they  were  "  in  need  of  considerable  repair."  1 
After  the  surrender  to  the  English,  in  1664,  the  "  Five 

1  These  buildings  are  clearly  distinguishable  upon  the  "  Hartgers  View  "  of 
1628  or  1630,  and  were  probably  then  just  erected.    See  ante,  page  2,  note. 


32      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Houses  "  were  confiscated  as  the  property  of  the  West  India 
Company.1  Being  no  longer  required  for  their  original  pur- 
poses, they  were  put  to  various  uses  by  the  English ;  among 
others  they  were  used  for  a  time  partly  as  officers'  quarters, 
and  partly  as  a  hospital  for  the  garrison ;  but  becoming  dilap- 
idated, they  were  demolished  about  the  year  1680,  and  the 
sites  sold.  The  narrow  Winckel  Straet  was  then  closed  and 
granted  to  the  owners  of  the  private  houses  fronting  upon  it 
on  the  west,  whose  lots  had  previously  been  rather  short 
in  depth,  and  were  now  made  to  front  upon  Whitehall 
Street.  The  site  of  the  Five  Shops  of  the  West  India  Com- 
pany is  now  covered,  so  far  at  least  as  the  end  towards  Stone 

1  Immediately  after  the  surrender  to  the  English  in  1664,  an  attachment  was 
sued  out  against  these  houses  upon  an  alleged  claim  against  the  West  India 
Company  by  one  George  Baxter.  Baxter  was  an  Englishman  of  a  rather  tur- 
bulent disposition  who  had  been  for  a  number  of  years  in  the  Company's  ser- 
vice, and  was  a  lieutenant  uuder  the  notorious  Captain  John  Underhill.  As 
early  as  1641,  he  had  attempted  to  farm  a  tract  upon  Manhattan  Island,  embrac- 
ing the  site  of  the  present  Bellevue  Hospital,  and  forming  a  part  of  what  was 
afterwards  known  as  the  Kip's  Bay  Farm.  Subsequently  he  acquired  a  tract 
of  land  near  Gravesend  upon  Long  Island.  He  is  understood  to  have  been  a 
brother  of  Thomas  Baxter,  whose  difficulties  with  the  Dutch  Colonial  administra- 
tion and  the  confiscation  of  whose  property  have  been  previously  alluded  to 
(ante,  p.  19).  Influenced  by  motives  apparently  not  unconnected  with  his 
brother's  misfortunes,  George  Baxter,  in  the  beginning  of  1655,  was  instrumental 
in  stirring  up  considerable  resistance  to  the  Dutch  authorities  at  Gravesend. 
He  was  promptly  arrested  and  imprisoned  at  the  Town  Hall  in  New  Amster- 
dam, but  while  thus  in  prison  he  prevailed  upon  one  Thomas  Greedy,  a  resident 
of  the  newly  planted  settlement  of  Middelburg  (now  Newtown)  upon  Long 
Island,  to  make  an  attempt,  with  the  aid  of  a  negro  man,  to  drive  away  his 
(Baxter's)  cattle,  which  had  been  seized  by  the  Gravesend  magistrates,  and 
were  in  their  custody.  For  this  offence  Greedy  received  a  sentence  of  twelve 
years'  banishment,  and  the  property  of  Baxter  was  confiscated.  Upon  the  sur- 
render in  1664,  however,  Baxter,  evidently  believing  that  the  English  day  had 
come,  presented  a  claim  of  1278  florins  against  the  Company  for  his  losses,  and 
attached  their  houses  as  above  stated.  Cornelis  van  Ruyven,  the  former  Secre- 
tary of  the  Colony,  who  had  been  appointed  by  Governor  Nicoll  a  trustee  or 
receiver  of  the  West  India  Company's  property,  appeared  before  the  magistrates, 
and  recapitulated  to  them  Baxter's  doings  of  nearly  ten  years  before.  He  was 
roughly  interrupted  several  times  by  Baxter,  who  gave  him  the  lie  repeatedly  in 
the  presence  of  the  court.  The  tribunal  was  not  very  sympathetic,  for  it  not 
only  fined  Baxter  for  contempt  of  court,  but  appears  to  have  taken  no  further 
notice  of  his  proceedings. 


THE  BRUGH  STEEGH 


Street  is  concerned,  by  what  is  known  as  the  "  Merchants' 
Building." 

The  land  occupied  by  the  West  India  Company's  shops, 
between  Stone  and  Bridge  streets,  seems  to  have  been  partly 
bounded  upon  the  east  by  a  narrow  and  obscure  lane,  known 
as  the  Br  ugh  Steegh,  or  "Bridge  Lane,"  which  was  a  cross- 
way  to  facilitate  communication  with  the  bridge  over  the 
small  stream  which  ran  through  the  present  Broad  Street, 
and  which  was  probably  in  use  before  Brouwer  or  Stone 
Street  was  opened  through;  it  may  indeed  have  been  the 
remains  of  an  earlier  plan  of  streets  than  the  one  finally 
adopted,  for  there  are  evidences  of  its  having  extended 
through  the  present  blocks  as  far  north  as  Beaver  Street,  and 
through  what  was  sometimes  called  the  Church  Lane  (being 
a  narrow  passageway  lying  west  of  the  first  church  building), 
south  into  Pearl  Street.1  This  lane  crossed  the  site  now 
occupied  by  the  building  known  as  No.  6  on  the  south  side 
of  Stone  Street,  and  bore  off  somewhat  to  the  east  as  it 
approached  Bridge  Street.  It  was  about  twenty-two  English 
feet  in  width. 

Upon  the  west  side  of  this  lane  and  extending  to  within  a 
few  feet  of  Bridge  Street,  stood  a  house  used  at  one  time  ap- 
parently as  the  official  residence  of  the  officer  known  as  the 
fiscal,  or  public  prosecutor,  of  the  colony.  In  1647,  it  being 
then  perhaps  no  longer  used  for  such  purposes,  we  find 

1  There  are,  in  fact,  certain  obscure  indications  presented  by  the  "  Hartgers 
View,"  and  by  some  of  the  early  records,  that  the  first  village  consisted  of  three 
narrow  parallel  lanes  running  north  and  south,  and  one  —  the  so-called  Beaver 
Path — running  east  and  west.  Of  these  lanes  the  easternmost  appears  to 
have  been  the  Brugh  Steegh  ;  the  middle  one  seems  to  have  occupied  the  easterly 
portion  of  the  present  Whitehall  Street  and  the  Bowling  Green,  and  to  have 
been  merely  widened  upon  the  west,  and  thrown  into  the  later  Marckveldt ; 
while  the  westernmost  of  the  lanes,  with  the  buildings  upon  it,  would  then  have 
occupied  the  present  Bowling  Green,  into  which  it  would  have  been  thrown,  and 
its  buildings  demolished  at  the  time  of  the  construction  of  the  fort  and  its  ap- 
proaches, 1628-35.  As  for  the  Beaver  Path,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  it  was 
originally  a  continuation  to  the  North  River  shore  of  the  present  Beaver  Street, 
and  was  not,  as  has  been  claimed,  the  present  Morris  Street.  The  portion  west 
of  Broadway  was  closed  and  granted  to  private  parties  before  1650. 

3 


34      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Director-General  Stuyvesant  recommending  the  establishment 
of  a  more  permanent  school  than  had  hitherto  existed,  and 
that  it  should  be  kept  "  in  the  kitchen  of  the  fiscal."  After 
the  opening  of  Stone  Street,  not  long  before  the  date  last 
mentioned,  the  lane  was  no  longer  much  needed  for  public 
use,  and  it  appears  to  have  fallen  into  the  condition  of  a 
mere  open  passageway.  It  was  not  finally  closed,  however, 
till  1674,  when  with  other  public  lands  it  was  used  to  afford 
small  building  sites  for  several  persons,  whose  houses  had 
been  demolished  as  being  too  near  the  fortifications. 

Just  east  of  the  Brugh  Steegh  stood  the  brewery  of  the 
West  India  Company,  upon  land  now  occupied  in  part  by  an 
engine-house  of  the  New  York  Fire  Department  and  in  part 
by  the  building  No.  10  Stone  Street.  This  brewery  must  have 
been  erected  at  a  very  early  date,  and  undoubtedly  gave  to 
the  street  its  original  appellation  of  the  "  Brouwer's  Straet." 
Valentine  finds  the  derivation  of  the  name  of  this  street  in 
the  fact  that  Oloff  Stevensen  van  Cortlandt,  who  resided 
upon  the  north  side  of  the  street,  nearly  opposite  to  this 
building,  was  himself  at  one  time  engaged  in  the  business  of 
brewing.  It  does  not  appear,  however,  from  the  early  records 
that  his  brewery  actually  stood  upon  Stone  Street ;  it  seems 
to  have  been  rather  upon  the  lane  known  as  the  Marckveldt 
Steegh,  of  which  a  fragment  survives  to-day  as  Marketfield 
Street ;  at  all  events,  the  brewery  of  the  West  India  Com- 
pany must  have  antedated  Van  Cortlandt's  residence  here  by 
at  least  half  a  score  of  years.  When  Peter  Stuyvesant  was 
sent  over  as  Director-General,  in  1647,  after  the  ruinous 
administration  of  Kieft,  he  saw  that  something  must  be  done 
in  the  way  of  raising  taxes  from  the  people  of  New  Amster- 
dam, so  as  to  relieve  the  West  India  Company  of  part  of  the 
burden  of  maintaining  the  colony.  He  could  think  of  no 
better  device  for  this  end  than  by  enforcing  a  stringent 
excise  tax  upon  wine  and  beer.  In  order  to  carry  this  out 
successfully,  it  would  be  desirable  for  the  company  to  discon- 
tinue its  own  brewing  operations,  and  to  throw  the  business 
into  the  hands  of  private  parties.    This  led,  without  doubt,  to 


PIETER  CORNELISSEN'S  GARDEN  35 


the  abandonment  of  the  Company's  brewer}',  and,  in  1651, 
the  ground  is  referred  to  as  being  "where  the  Company's 
brew-house  formerly  hath  stood."  That  the  building  had 
then  been  demolished  is  not  necessarily  implied,  and  does  not 
seem  to  have  been  the  case,  for  on  the  rude  plan  of  New 
York  attached  to  the  Nicoll  Map,  of  about  16G6,  a  building  of 
more  than  ordinary  size  is  shown  as  occupying  this  location. 

Upon  a  September  day  in  the  year  1637,  the  yacht  "  Dol- 
phin" lay  at  anchor  near  the  mouth  of  the  Texel.  Here, 
amidst  the  crowd  of  Dutch  men-of-war,  or  merchant  vessels, 
East  Indiamen,  Baltic  coasters,  colliers  from  Newcastle,  and 
fishing  smacks  from  all  parts  of  the  North  Sea,  which  filled 
that  great  commercial  highway  of  the  Netherlands,  leading 
from  the  Zuyder  Zee  out  into  the  German  Ocean,  the 
skipper  of  the  "  Dolphin  "  hailed  his  brother  skipper  of  the 
"  Herring."  He  was  in  very  poor  trim  for  an  ocean  voyage 
to  New  Amsterdam,  to  which  port  he  was  bound ;  his  vessel 
was  leaking  badly;  he  had  no  carpenter,  and  his  crew 
stoutly  refused  to  go  to  sea  without  one.  Could  the  skipper  of 
the  "  Herring  "  do  anything  for  him?  On  board  of  the  "  Her- 
ring "  was  a  young  carpenter  named  Pieter  Cornelissen,  whom 
the  skipper  of  his  vessel  was  able  to  spare  ;  and  as  he  was 
willing  to  go,  he  embarked  on  board  of  the  "  Dolphin  "  and 
reached  New  Amsterdam  in  safety,  after  a  perilous  voyage  in 
which  most  of  the  cargo  was  ruined.  He  never  returned  to 
Europe,  but  became  a  denizen  of  New  Amsterdam.  It  was 
upon  such  slight  accidental  circumstances  as  these  that 
many  of  the  colonists  came  to  America. 

At  New  Amsterdam,  Cornelissen  entered  the  service  of  the 
West  India  Company  as  a  house  carpenter,  or  "  timmerman," 
and  thus  acquired  the  appellation  which  he  retained  the 
remainder  of  his  life,  of  Pieter  Cornelissen  Timmerman. 
Looking  about  him  for  an  available  building  spot  in  New 
Amsterdam,  Pieter  Cornelissen  found,  along  the  south  side  of 
the  newly  laid  out  Brouwer  or  Stone  Street,  a  long,  narrow 
strip  of  vacant  ground,  extending  from  the  West  India  Com- 


36      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


pany's  Brewery  down  to  within  thirty  or  forty  feet  of  the 
present  Broad  Street.  Brugh  or  Bridge  Street,  as  has  pre- 
viously been  stated,  was  in  use  as  a  street  for  a  considerable 
time  before  Stone  Street  was  marked  out,  and  the  grants  of 
land  upon  it  were  so  deep  that  nothing  remained  afterwards 
upon  the  latter  street  but  this  strip  acquired  by  Cornelissen, 
which  was  only  about  fifty  feet  wide  at  one  end,  and  at  the 
end  towards  Broad  Street  not  more  than  twenty  feet  wide. 
It  seems  to  have  been  still  further  curtailed  of  its  dimensions 
by  a  subsequent  widening  of  Brouwer  Straet,  to  the  extent 
of  several  feet,  the  Director  and  Council  reserving  the 
right  to  so  widen  the  "road"  in  the  grant  to  Cornelissen  in 
1646.  Pieter  Cornelissen  does  not  seem  to  have  erected  any 
house  upon  this  property,  but  he  planted  it  with  fruit  trees 
in  preparation  for  doing  so.  The  present  locality  of  the  south 
side  of  Stone  Street,  towards  Broad,  is  little  suggestive  of 
cherry,  peach,  and  pear  trees,  yet  here  they  stood  in  bearing  in 
the  year  1651,  at  which  time  Cornelissen  departed  from  New 
Amsterdam,  probably  under  the  orders  of  the  Company,  for 
the  Dutch  settlements  on  the  South  or  Delaware  River.  Re- 
turning subsequently  to  New  Amsterdam,  he  rebuilt,  after  its 
destruction,  in  1655,  by  the  Indians,  the  mill  upon  Wessell's 
Creek,  in  the  late  town  of  Newtown,  upon  Long  Island.  This 
mill  site,  in  a  picturesque  spot  not  far  from  the  resort  now 
known  as  North  Beach,  was  used  for  its  original  purposes 
until  comparatively  recent  years,  being  of  late  known  as 
"  Jackson's  Mill."  Pieter  Cornelissen  did  not  operate  it  very- 
long  himself,  but  he  purchased  land  in  the  immediate  neighbor- 
hood, and  was  the  ancestor  of  a  worthy  family  not  yet  extinct 
there.  Before  leaving  New  Amsterdam,  in  1651,  he  found  a 
purchaser  for  his  property  on  Brouwer  Straet,  in  the  person  of 
Jacob  Kip,  the  son  of  Hendrick  Hendricksen  Kip,  the  latter 
of  whom  owned  the  adjoining  property  fronting  upon  Brugh 
or  Bridge  Street,  where  his  house  stood.  Hendrick,  the 
father,  who  was  sometime  of  Amsterdam,  seems  to  have  been 
one  of  the  earliest  settlers  in  New  Amsterdam,  and  his  house 
here  had  probably  been  built  for  several  years  previous  to  his 
ground  brief  for  the  land  in  1612. 


HENDRICK  KIP  THE  TAILOR 


37 


Hendrick  Hendricksen  Kip  was  perhaps  one  of  the  most 
valorous  tailors  who  ever  drew  needle.  If,  as  Valentine 
somewhat  problematically  asserts,  his  cognomen  of  u  Kip " 
meant  "chicken,"  it  must  have  referred  to  a  gamecock  of  the 
first  breed.  He  pitted  himself  against  the  redoubtable  Director 
Kief t  at  an  early  period,  and  never  smoothed  his  ruffled  feathers 
till  the  latter  had  departed  for  the  Netherlands  upon  his  recall, 
even  refusing  to  give  him  a  parting  shake  of  the  hand  in 
token  of  amnesty.  It  was  several  years  before  that  event,  or 
about  1643,  that  Hendrick,  according  to  an  officious  informer, 
uttered  a  witticism  of  appalling  audacity  towards  his  "  divinely 
appointed  magistrate  "  (as  Kieft  was  fond  of  calling  himself), 
saying  that  "people  ought  to  send  the  Kivit"  (meaning 
"  pee-wit,"  or  "  lap-wing," — a  play  at  once  upon  Kieft's  name, 
person,  and  character)  "  home  by  the  Pauwe  "  (peacock),  "  and 
also  to  give  a  letter  of  recommendation  to  Master  Gerrit "  (the 
public  executioner,  or  Jack  Ketch,  of  Holland) ;  "  he,  himself, 
would  willingly  send  a  pound  Flemish,  in  order  that  he  should 
let  him  die  like  a  nobleman."  This  generous  offer  had  refer- 
ence to  the  custom  in  the  Germanic  countries  of  inflicting 
capital  punishment  upon  the  nobility  by  decapitation,  and 
upon  the  lower  classes  by  hanging  —  a  custom  alluded  to  by 
Heine  in  his  appeal  to  the  Kaiser  Friedrich  Rothbart,  or 
Barbarossa,  for  impartial  rule  in  the  "  Holy  German  Empire," 
upon  his  future  awakening  from  his  legendary  slumber  : 

"  Nur  manchmal  wechsle  ab  und  lass 
Den  Adel  h'angen,  und  kopfe 
Ein  bisschen  die  Burger  und  Bauern,  wir  sind 
Ja  alle  Gottesgeschbpfe." 

Change  once  in  a  while,  and  let  the  nobleman  be  hung,  and 
the  peasant's  head  be  chopped  off.  Are  we  not  all  alike 
God's  creatures ! 


CHAPTER  V 


HENDRICK  KIP  AND  HIS  HOUSE.— THE  KIP  COTTAGES 
ON  STONE  STREET.— JAN  JAN  SEN  VAN  ST.  OBIN  AND 
THE  SLAVE  SHIP"  GIDEON" 

Urn  Christi  willcn  verschone,  o  ITerr, 
Das  Leben  der  schwarzen  Sunder  ! 
Erziirnten  sie  dich,  so  weisst  du  ja, 
Sie  sind  so  dumra  wie  die  Kinder. 

Verschone  ihr  Leben  um  Christi  willn, 
Der  fiir  uns  alle  gestorben ! 
Denn  bleiben  mir  nicht  dreihundert  Stiick, 
So  ist  mein  Geschaft  verdorben. 

Heine. 

IN  the  last  preceding  chapter,  some  allusion  was  made  to 
the  hostility  of  Hendrick  Hendricksen  Kip,  the  tailor  of 
Brugh  or  Bridge  Street,  towards  Director-General  Kieft. 
So  hostile  was  he,  in  fact,  that  he  actually  refused  upon  one 
occasion  to  give  him  something  which  is  usually  very  freely 
tendered,  —  being  such  a  cheap  gift,  —  namely,  advice.  It 
was  after  Kieft  and  his  associates  had  patched  up  a  proposed 
treaty  with  the  Indians  to  end  the  ruinous  war  which  he  had 
brought  on  the  colonists  in  1643.  The  Council,  on  the  30th 
of  August,  1645,  ordered  the  court  messenger  to  "  notify  all  the 
inhabitants  to  assemble  in  the  Fort  when  the  colors  are  hoisted 
and  the  bell  rung,  to  hear  the  proposals  on  which  a  peace  is 
about  to  be  concluded  with  the  Indians,  and  if  any  one  can  give 
good  advice,  then  to  offer  it  freely."  That  worthy  made  his 
report  to  the  Council  that  a  all  the  citizens  in  the  Manhat- 
tans, from  the  highest  to  the  lowest,  will  attend,  except  one 
Hendrick  Kip,  a  tailor." 


HENDRICK  KIP'S  HOUSE 


39 


Although  Hendrick  seems  to  have  been  more  fortunate  than 
many  others  in  keeping  out  of  the  clutches  of  Kieft,  yet  the 
government  had  its  eye  upon  him ;  and  when  his  more  indis- 
creet "  huysvrouw  "  made  public  statements  that  "  the  Direc- 
tor and  Council  were  false  judges,  and  the  fiscal  a  forsworn 
fiscal,"  it  pounced  upon  her  at  once  on  a  charge  of  a  sort  of 
lese-majeste.  The  good  lady  stoutly  denied  the  charges,  but 
her  husband,  with  a  phenomenal  astuteness,  appeared  before 
the  court  and  stated  that  "  his  wife  has  been  so  upset  and  so 
out  of  health  ever  since  Maryn  Adriaensen's  attempt  to  mur- 
der the  Director- General,  that  when  disturbed  in  the  least  she 
knows  not  what  she  does/'  The  reference  was  to  the  assault 
attempted  upon  Kieft,  nearly  three  years  before,  by  one  Maryn 
Adriaensen,  in  a  quarrel  about  their  respective  shares  of  culpa- 
bility in  bringing  about  the  Indian  War.  The  prosecutor  and 
the  defendant  in  the  court  proceedings  were  ordered  to  produce 
their  evidence,  but  nothing  further  appears  to  have  been  done 
in  the  matter,  Kieft  being  soon  afterwards  recalled. 

With  his  well-known  views  respecting  the  imbecility  of  the 
late  administration  in  New  Netherland,  Hendrick  Kip  was 
chosen  one  of  the  committee  known  as  "  The  Nine  Men," 
which  drew  up  a  remonstrance  to  the  States-General  against  the 
policy  adopted  by  the  colonial  government  of  the  West  India 
Company,  and  the  ruinous  results  brought  thereby  upon  the 
colonists.  The  new  Director-General,  Peter  Stuyvesant,  im- 
mediately took  up  the  cudgels  in  behalf  of  all  maligned  magis- 
trates, and  sent  the  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven  over  to  the 
Netherlands  to  refute  the  charges  made  before  the  States- 
General.  The  "  refutation  "  consisted  principally  in  vilifying 
the  members  of  the  Committee  who  had  dared  to  sign  the 
remonstrance.  "As  to  losses,"  said  the  Secretary,  "Hendrick 
Kip  was  a  tailor,  who  never  lost  anything,"  which  in  Van 
Tienhoven's  mouth  was  only  another  way  of  saying  he  had 
nothing  to  lose. 

This,  however,  was  not  true.  Kip's  worldly  condition  was 
doubtless  not  equal  to  that  of  some  of  the  other  colonists,  but 
his  house,  in  its  garden  of  about  sixty-five  feet  front  upon 


40       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Bridge  Street,  was  quietly  occupied  by  him  for  many  years ; 
while  upon  the  land  adjoining  it  on  Stone  Street,  where  Pieter 
Cornelissen  had  planted  his  garden  (previously  described), 
Hendrick's  two  sons,  Isaac  and  Jacob,  and  his  son-in-law,  Jan 
Jansen  van  St.  Obin,  built  houses  for  themselves.  All  these 
houses  had  a  clear  outlook  upon  the  East  River,  and  upon 
the  vessels  in  port  (which  usually  anchored  directly  in  front 
of  them),  and  to  the  wooded  Long  Island  shores  beyond,  — 
for  no  houses  were  built  at  this  point  along  the  river  shore  at 
Pearl  Street,  to  intercept  the  view,  prior  to  1656.  The  last 
buildings  upon  the  shore  at  that  time,  coming  eastwards  from 
the  fort,  were  the  former  Dutch  church  and  its  parsonage, 
erected  in  1633,  the  church  standing  nearly  opposite  the 
westerly  corner  of  Hendrick  Kip's  garden. 

It  has  been  already  stated  that  the  two  sons  and  the  son-in- 
law  of  Hendrick  Kip  had  their  dwellings  upon  the  south  side 
of  Stone  Street,  in  what  had  previously  been  Pieter  Cornelis- 
sen's  garden.  These  were  probably  small  cottages,  as  the 
plots  of  ground  upon  which  they  stood  were  of  small  size  ;  and 
they  were  built  just  about  the  period  of  our  survey,  in  1655, 
though  the  precise  dates  are  uncertain.  Their  owners  were 
quite  young  men  at  the  time,  and  recently  married.  The 
easternmost  of  these  houses,  which  extended  within  forty  or 
fifty  feet  of  the  present  Broad  Street,  was  that  of  Isaac  Kip, 
afterwards  a  Hudson  River  trader;  and  near  it  on  the  west 
was  that  of  his  brother  Jacob,  —  the  site  of  both  these  build- 
ings being  now  covered  by  Davidson's  Cafe\  Jacob  Kip,  the 
second  of  these  brothers,  was  a  man  of  considerable  activity 
and  enterprise.  His  marriage,  in  1654,  to  Marie  de  la 
Montagne,  daughter  of  Doctor  Jean  (or  Johannes,  using  the 
Latinized  form,  by  which  he  was  generally  known)  de  la 
Montagne,  seems  to  have  served  him  in  the  way  of  advance- 
ment, his  wife's  father  —  a  French  Huguenot,  and  a  man  of 
education  —  having  stood  high  in  the  favor  of  Kieft  and  of 
the  Directors  of  the  West  India  Company.  As  one  of  the  city 
magistrates,  and  as  Secretary  of  the  Court  of  Burgomasters, 
Jacob  Kip's  bold,  business-like  signature  is  familiar  in  the 


JAN  JANSEN  VAN  ST.  OBIN  41 


old  records,  and  indeed  he  was  a  clerk  to  Director-General 
Stuyvesant  at  a  still  earlier  date,  in  1650.  In  later  years,  he 
became  somewhat  of  an  investor  in  unimproved  or  farm  lands 
on  Manhattan  Island,  and  about  the  year  1670  he  bought  an 
old  "frontier"  plantation  which  had  seen  many  vicissitudes, 
and  there  established  a  farm,  to  the  vicinity  of  which  he  gave 
a  name  that  became  historic,  the  memory  of  which  has  not  yet 
entirely  faded  away ;  namely,  that  of  "  Kip's  Bay,"  on  the 
East  River  at  about  Thirty-Fifth  to  Thirty-Seventh  streets. 

Jan  Jansen,  the  brother-in-law  of  the  two  young  Kips,  who 
also  occupied  a  house  upon  the  south  side  of  Stone  Street, 
somewhat  to  the  west  of  the  cottages  of  the  latter,  was  a  per- 
son of  a  rather  different  disposition.  He  was  undoubtedly  of 
Dutch  or  of  Flemish  extraction,  and  is  usually  spoken  of  in 
the  records  of  the  time  as  Jan  Jansen  van  St.  Obin ;  but  in 
the  church  record  of  his  marriage  in  1649  to  Baertje  (or 
Bertha)  Hendrickse  Kip,  his  place  of  nativity  is  given  as 
"  Tubingen,"  —  presumably  the  city  of  that  name  in  the 
Duchy  of  Wurtemberg,  in  Germany.  While  there  may  be 
grounds  for  supposing,  from  the  similarity  of  sound,  that  the 
latter  designation  is  a  mistake  or  a  corruption  of  some  other 
name,  the  locality  of  "  St.  Obin "  seems  to  be  unknown  in 
Dutch  topography.  Jan  Jansen's  father,  J  an  Wansaer,  seems 
to  have  been  a  resident  of  Casant,  not  far  from  Antwerp. 

Jan  Jansen  van  St.  Obin  was  a  person  of  nautical  proclivi- 
ties, insomuch  that  he  became  a  part  owner  of  the  small  French 
frigate  "  La  Garce,"  which  sailed  as  a  privateer  under  letters 
from  the  Dutch  government.  She  afterwards  got  into  trouble 
with  the  Admiralty  about  her  prizes,  but  at  the  time  of  Jan 
Jansen's  interest  in  her  (for  he  appears  to  have  sold  out  his 
share  in  1646)  we  may  presume  that  she  confined  her  atten- 
tion strictly  to  the  Spanish  and  Portuguese  craft  which  were 
within  the  line  of  her  legitimate  business,  though  the  captains 
of  privateering  vessels  in  this  war  were  sometimes  rather 
obtuse  upon  such  points,  and  took  almost  anything  that  came 
along.  Whether  Jan  Jansen  sailed  personally  in  the  priva- 
teer is  not  known,  but  certain  it  is  that  occasionally,  about 


42      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


this  time,  his  business  seems  to  have  called  him  away  from 
New  Amsterdam  for  protracted  periods,  at  which  times  he  had 
the  practice  of  depositing  with  various  prominent  men  of  New 
Amsterdam  considerable  amounts  of  personal  property,  taking 
their  receipts  for  it,  which  he  caused  to  be  promptly  entered 
upon  the  books  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Colony.  Upon  one  of 
these  occasions,  the  deposit  was  of  quite  a  large  amount  of 
silver  ware,  —  rather  an  unusual  stock  for  a  New  Netherland 
"  trader,"  and  which  leads  to  the  conjecture  that  it  may  have 
been  picked  up  by  him  somewhere  upon  the  Spanish  main, 
or  perhaps  in  the  West  Indies.  Jan  Jansen,  however,  was 
not  always  fortunate  in  his  adventures,  for  shortly  prior  to 
1654,  a  bark  in  which  he  was  then  interested  was  captured 
—  or  "stolen,"  as  the  Dutch  authorities  expressed  it  —  by 
Thomas  Baxter,  claiming  to  act  under  letters  of  marque 
issued  at  Rhode  Island,  to  which  previous  allusion  has  been 
made.  Baxter,  who  was  probably  not  much  hampered  by 
Admiralty  rules,  promptly  disposed  of  his  prize  to  Thomas 
Moore  of  New  Haven,  but  the  Dutch  government  contrived 
to  bring  such  pressure  to  bear  upon  the  latter  that,  together 
with  Isaac  Allerton,  the  leading  merchant  in  the  New  England 
trade,  at  New  Amsterdam,  he  gave  a  bond  for  the  restoration 
of  the  vessel  or  its  value. 

Jan  Jansen  van  St.Obin  is  perhaps  most  prominently  known 
as  the  pilot  of  the  slave  ship  "  Gideon,"  which  arrived  at  the 
harbor  of  New  Amsterdam,  with  a  cargo  of  two  hundred  and 
ninety  slaves,  in  August,  1664,  a  few  days  before  the  appear- 
ance of  the  English  fleet  concerned  in  the  capture  of  New 
Netherland.  These  slaves,  Director  Stuyvesant  wrote,  were 
"  a  very  poor  assortment.  The  females  certainly  all  so  poor 
that  we  apprehend  the  largest  part  of  them  will  remain  at  our 
charge,  or  we  must  otherwise  part  with  them  at  a  very  low 
price."  The  Director-General's  estimate  of  the  condition  of 
these  blacks  appears  to  have  been  a  pretty  just  one,  for  we 
afterwards  find  Johan  de  Decker  (who  had  been  a  member  of 
Director  Stuyvesant's  Council,  but  who,  having  become  ob- 
noxious to  the  new  authorities,  had  been  ordered  to  "  within 


THE  SLAVE  TRADE 


43 


the  space  of  ten  dayes  transporte  himself e  out  of  this  governe- 
ment"),  presenting  a  petition  from  Amsterdam  to  the  Duke 
of  York  for  the  restoration  of  certain  negroes,  forming  a  part 
of  the  Gideon's  "  assortment  "  which  had  been  seized  at  New- 
Amsterdam  by  order  of  Governor  Nicoll.  It  appears  from 
this  document  that  twenty  of  these  negroes  had  been  allotted 
to  the  petitioner  by  way  of  settlement  of  his  arrears  of  salary 
at  New  Amsterdam :  ten  of  them  he  had  otherwise  disposed 
of,  "having  ye  other  tenne  negroes  in  (now  so  called)  New 
Yorke  in  ye  custody  of  one  Resolved  Waldron  to  dyett  and 
keep  them  for  your  petitioner."  The  "  Gideon  "  had  evidently 
lacked  the  master  mind  of  "The  supercargo,  Mynheer  van 
Koek,"  of  Heine's  ballad,  who,  being  distressed  by  the  an- 
nouncement from  the  physician  of  his  slave-ship  that  the 
negroes  were  dying  upon  the  passage  in  great  numbers,  from 
melancholy,  devised  the  genial  scheme  of  forcing  them  by 
the  lash  to  daily  dances  to  quick  music,  in  order  to  keep  up 
their  spirits  and  drive  dull  care  away. 

Whether  Jan  Jansen,  as  pilot  of  the  "Gideon,"  received 
his  pay  in  the  same  commodity  as  De  Decker,  we  are  not  in- 
formed. He  certainly  suffered  no  diminution  of  respectability 
in  the  community  of  his  time  by  reason  of  his  occupation ; 
furthermore,  the  gains  were  large,  and  that  alone  would  have 
been  quite  sufficient  with  most  of  his  neighbors  to  smother 
any  inconvenient  suggestions  that  might  have  arisen :  — 

41  Glass  beads,  and  brandy,  and  scissors  and  knives, 

And  other  cheap  trash  for  them  giving,  — 
The  profit  at  least  eight  hundred  per  cent, 

If  I  keep  the  half  of  them  living. 
For  fetch  I  three  hundred  blacks  alive 

To  the  port  of  Rio  Janeiro, 
'T  is  a  hundred  ducats  apiece  for  me, 

From  the  house  of  Gonzales  Perreiro." 

If  any  supersensitive  persons  were  found  who  ventured  to 
question  the  right  and  justice  of  this  traffic,  a  host  of  sup- 
porters were  as  ready  then  as  now,  with  about  as  much  or  as 
little  hypocrisy,  to  show  the  divinely  appointed  rights  of  the 


44      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


superior  race  over  the  inferior,  and  the  law  of  Destiny  which 
imperatively  demanded  that  the  latter  should  be  flogged,  as  it 
were,  out  of  darkness  into  the  light. 

It  is  only  fair  to  say,  however,  that  among  the  Dutch  of 
New  Netherland  the  slave  trade  exhibited  its  least  repulsive 
features.  No  important  difficulties  occurred  between  the 
blacks  and  their  masters  in  New  Amsterdam,  nor  do  the 
former  seem  to  have  been  often  the  subjects  of  any  serious 
criminal  prosecutions.  The  negroes  settled  down  into  house 
and  farm  servants;  the  relations  between  them  and  their 
masters  were  usually  of  a  somewhat  patriarchal  nature,  manu- 
missions were  frequent,  and  sincere  attachment  was  often 
manifested  on  both  sides.  It  was  the  hysterical  English  and 
their  Recorder,  Horsmanden,  who  were  responsible  for  the 
ghastly  tragedy  of  the  "  Negro  Plot  "  in  the  next  century,  and 
for  the  fiendish  torture  of  the  numerous  innocent  victims  of 
that  insane  delusion. 


CHAPTER  VI 


THE  WATER-SIDE.  —  DR.  HANS  KIERSTED.  —  THE  HOUSES 
OF  CORNELIS  VAN  STEENWYCK  AND  JOHANNES  NEVIUS. 
—  CAPTAIN  PAUL  US  VANDERGRIFT '—  THE  STOREHOUSE 
OF  THE  WEST  INDIA  COMPANY.  —  THE  WAREHOUSE 
OF  AUGUSTYN  HEERMANS.  — SECRETARY  VAN  TIEN- 
HOVEN.  —  THE  OLD  CHURCH  AND  PARSONAGE 

SOME  notice  should  be  taken  of  the  buildings  along  the  river 
shore,  east  of  the  Marckveldt,  or  Whitehall  Street,  and  of 
their  occupants  in  the  year  1655.  These  houses  fronted  upon 
an  open  street,  then  called  't  Water, — the  modern  Pearl 
Street,  —  but  upon  the  opposite  side  of  the  roadway  was  the 
open  shingly  beach  of  the  East  River.  The  houses  here,  at 
the  time  of  our  survey,  stood  in  compact  order,  and  were 
substantially  built,  most  if  not  all  of  them  being  of  brick. 
Though  the  deeds  or  ground  briefs  for  most  of  the  parcels  of 
land  at  this  locality  were  made  from  1645  to  1647,  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  believe  that  they  had  not  been  in  several  instances 
built  upon  at  an  earlier  period.  Nearly  all  of  the  buildings 
were  used  for  mercantile  purposes,  the  front  portions  of  the 
structures  being  probably  used  as  stores,  while  the  occupants 
availed  themselves  of  the  other  portions  for  their  dwellings. 
This  place  was,  in  short,  the  seat  of  the  larger  part  of  the 
wholesale  and  retail  trade  of  the  town. 

Of  the  first  building,  in  proceeding  eastwards  from  the 
Marckveldt,  which  building  was  the  former  storehouse  of 
the  West  India  Company,  mention  has  already  been  made.1 
The  next  house,  which  soon  became  the  corner  one  by  the 
removal  of  the  structure  of  the  West  India  Company,  was  long 
the  residence  of  Doctor  Hans  Kiersted,  the  leading  physician 

1  See  ante,  page  18. 


46      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


and  surgeon  of  the  town.  Hans  Kiersted  and  his  brother 
Jochem  (the  latter  of  whom  perished  in  1647,  in  the  wreck 
of  the  "  Princess  ")  were  Germans  from  Magdeburg;  and  as 
they  were  early  residents  of  New  Amsterdam,  there  is  reason 
to  suspect  that  they  were  refugees  after  the  dreadful  sack  of 
Magdeburg  by  Count  Tilly's  savage  troops  in  the  year  1631, 
at  which  time  Hans  Kiersted  was  about  nineteen  years  of  age. 
He  is  found,  as  early  as  the  year  1638,  holding  the  position  of 
official  surgeon  of  the  West  India  Company  at  New  Amster- 
dam, and  the  Dutch  records  contain  many  of  his  official  cer- 
tificates given  within  the  next  eight  or  ten  years  as  to  wounds 
received  in  various  affrays  by  the  quarrelsome  soldiers  of  the 
garrison  at  Fort  Amsterdam. 

In  1642,  by  his  marriage  to  Sarah  Roeloffse,  Doctor 
Kiersted  became  son-in-law  to  Annetje  Janse  Bogardus,  and 
within  a  few  years  after  that  event,  —  as  early  as  1646,  —  we 
find  him  residing  here  upon  the  water-side,  where  his  humble 
stock  of  drugs  would  doubtless  have  formed  a  great  contrast 
to  that  of  the  modern  "pharmacy  "  which  has  been  established 
next  door  to  the  original  site  of  the  trade  in  New  Amsterdam. 
Before  1648,  "Doctor  Hans,"  as  he  was  frequently  called, 
had  quitted  the  service  of  the  West  India  Company,  and  was 
engaged  in  his  own  private  practice,  which  seems  to  have 
been  a  reasonably  lucrative  one,  for  as  early  as  1646  he  was 
the  owner  of  a  "plantation"  upon  the  Bouwery  Lane,  about 
a  mile  and  a  half  out  of  the  town.  Doctor  Kiersted  died 
shortly  prior  to  1667,  but  fifty  years  later  his  property  at  the 
corner  of  Pearl  and  Whitehall  streets  was  still  in  the  occu- 
pation of  his  descendants. 

The  next  neighbor  upon  the  east  of  Doctor  Hans,  in  the 
year  1655,  was  a  man  who,  though  not  particularly  con- 
spicuous at  that  time,  subsequently  became  of  considerable 
prominence  in  the  town;  this  was  Cornelis  Jacobsen  van 
Steenwyck,  formerly  of  Haerlem  in  Holland.  The  period 
of  his  coming  to  New  Amsterdam  is  not  known,  though  he  is 
mentioned  as  early  as  1651,  and  it  appears  probable  that  he 
was  a  brother  of  Abraham  Jacobsen  van  Steenwyck,  who  is 


CORNELIS  VAN  STEENWYCK 


47 


found  at  New  Amsterdam  as  early  as  1643.  Cornells  van 
Steenwyck  was  a  merchant,  and  in  all  probability  had  his 
store  in  this  building,  which  occupied  the  site  of  the  present 
No.  27  Pearl  Street;  it  was  a  modest  house,  like  that  of  his 
neighbors  on  either  side,  and  it  had  not  been  built  by  Van 
Steenwyck  himself,  but  was  purchased  by  him  in  1653  from 
a  Norwegian,  Roeloff  Jansen  Haies,  who  seems  to  have  been 
the  first  owner  of  the  property. 

Cornells  van  Steenwyck  soon  became  interested  in  shipping 
ventures ;  in  1654  he  was  a  partner  with  several  of  the  prin- 
cipal men  of  the  town  1  in  the  ship  "  Golden  Shark,"  then 
sent  on  a  voyage  to  the  West  Indies,  and  in  the  next  year 
we  find  him,  with  several  others,  signing  a  protest  against  the 
action  of  the  Director  and  Council,  who  had  refused  to  allow 
the  signers  to  proceed  upon  a  contemplated  voyage  to  Hol- 
land, —  for  this  each  of  the  signers  was  fined  25  guilders  by 
the  despotic  Stuyvesant.  In  spite,  however,  of  differences 
with  the  authorities,  Van  Steenwyck  seems  to  have  thrived 
so  well  that,  in  1663,  the  Director-General  himself  had 
become  a  borrower  on  behalf  of  the  needy  West  India  Com- 
pany from  that  merchant,  who  agreed  to  advance  the  sum  of 
12,000  guilders  (about  $4800)  in  wampum,  upon  a  draft  on 
the  West  India  Company,  backed  up  by  the  curious  collateral 
security  of  four  brass  cannon  in  Fort  Amsterdam.  He  had 
at  this  time  indeed  become  one  of  the  leading  merchants  in 
New  Amsterdam,  with  a  keen  eye  for  profits  in  almost  any 
direction,  handling  at  one  time  a  cargo  of  salt,  and  at  another 
a  cargo  of  negro  slaves.  His  business,  at  the  time  of  the 
surrender  to  the  English  in  1664,  had  outgrown  his  modest 
store  on  't  Water,  and  for  several  years  he  had  occupied  a 
more  elaborate  establishment  at  the  corner  of  the  present 
Bridge  and  Whitehall  streets,  just  back  of  the  house  in 
which  he  had  dwelt  in  1655. 

With  a  fair  knowledge  of  the  English  language,  and  with 
a  disposition  readily  to  accept  the  English  rule,  Cornelis  van 

1  With  Paulus  Leendertsen  van  der  Grift,  Cornelis  Schutt,  Allard  Anthony, 
and  G overt  Loockermans. 


48      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Steenwyck  soon  acquired  the  confidence  of  the  new  authori- 
ties, and  was  a  member  of  the  Colonial  Council  under  Gov- 
ernors Nicolls  and  Lovelace.  Furthermore,  he  was  popular 
with  the  Dutch  citizens,  was  one  of  the  burgomasters  of  the 
city  both  before  and  after  the  surrender,  and  was  mayor  from 
1668  to  1670,  and  again  in  1682  and  1683,  shortly  before  his 
death.  In  his  latter  years  Cornells  van  Steenwyck,  who  had 
long  been  considered  to  be  a  man  of  wealth,  probably  kept  up 
as  luxurious  a  style  of  living  as  any  one  in  the  Colony  at  that 
time,  but  at  the  period  of  our  survey  he  was  an  unmarried  man, 
and  his  store  on  't  Water  was  doubtless  not  materially  different 
from  the  ordinary  general  store  of  a  small  trading  town.1 

The  next  neighbor  of  Cornells  van  Steenwyck  upon  the 
east,  in  the  year  of  our  survey,  was  a  man  who  was  afterwards 
of  some  prominence  as  notary  and  Clerk  of  the  Burgomasters, 
or  City  Clerk,  as  he  may  be  called,  which  office  he  held  as 
early  as  1658,  and  which  he  filled  for  a  number  of  years 
subsequent  to  that  time.  This  was  Johannes  Nevius,  who 
is  said  to  have  come  from  Solen  or  Zoelen,  a  village  of  the 
district  known  as  The  Betuwe,  which  skirts  the  south  bank 
of  the  Rhine  below  Arnhem,  and  who  was  himself,  at  the 
period  of  our  survey,  one  of  the  city  magistrates  or  schepens, 
of  New  Amsterdam,  and  was  a  merchant  or  trader  who 
seems  to  have  been  associated  in  business  with  his  wife's 
step-father,  Cornells  de  Potter,  a  merchant  of  note  in  the 
town.2  Looking  a  mile  or  so  up  the  East  River  from  his 
windows  upon  the  water-side,  Johannes  Nevius  could  see 
the  dwelling-house  and  the  pastures  and  grain-fields  of  his 
father-in-law's  farm  just  where  the  Breucklyn  Road  came 
down  the  hill  at  the  present  Fulton  Street  in  Brooklyn. 
Here  De  Potter  had  purchased,  as  early  as  1652,  from 
Cornells  Dircksen,  the  old  ferryman,  and  from  one  or  two 

1  For  sketch  by  Mr.  D.  T.  Valentine,  giving  many  curious  particulars  of 
Cornelis  van  Steenwyck,  see  Man.  N.  Y.  Com.  Council  for  1864,  p.  648. 

2  In  1654  Nevius  and  Cornelis  de  Potter  were  sued  as  being  jointly  indebted 
for  the  construction  of  a  vessel  called  the  "  New  Love." 


Portrait  of  Cornelis  van  Steenwyck 


THE  TOWN  CLERK  NEVIUS 


49 


other  owners,  the  ferry  property  with  sixty  or  seventy  acres 
of  land  lying  north  of  Fulton  Street;  and  with  the  curious 
appurtenance  of  "thirty-five  goats  and  a  half  on  Jan  Marris' 
farm  at  Gravesend,"  —  evidently  a  share  or  interest  in  a  herd 
kept  there.  He  does  not  seem  to  have  managed  the  ferry  in 
person,  but  leased  it  to  others. 

Ariaentje  Bleyck,  the  wife  of  Johannes  Nevius  and  step- 
daughter of  Cornelis  de  Potter,  appears  by  her  marriage 
record  in  the  Dutch  Church  on  Nov.  18,  1653,  to  have  been 
a  native  of,  or  at  any  rate  to  have  resided  at,  Batavia,  in  the 
island  of  Java.  It  was  there,  in  all  probability,  that  her 
mother,  Swantje  Janse,  married  Cornelis  de  Potter  (who  was 
doubtless  a  widower  at  the  time),  since  his  own  daughter 
Elizabeth,  who  in  the  same  year  of  the  marriage  of  her  step- 
sister was  united  in  matrimony  to  Isaac  Bedlo,  afterwards  a 
man  of  note  in  New  Amsterdam,  appears  likewise  in  the 
marriage  record  as  from  Batavia. 

Johannes  Nevius  did  not  long  occupy  the  house  on  't 
Water  in  New  Amsterdam,  for  in  1658  he  sold  it  to  his 
neighbor  Cornelis  van  Steenwyck.  Subsequently  the  build- 
ing, which  covered  the  site  of  the  present  house,  No.  29  Pearl 
Street,  became  of  interest,  as  the  residence  for  a  long  time  of 
Dominie  Samuel  Drisius,  minister  of  the  Dutch  Church  at 
New  Amsterdam  from  1652  to  1671. 1 

In  the  very  interesting  and  important  view  of  New  Am- 
sterdam which  appears  upon  the  map  of  Nicolaes  Visscher, 
of  about  1652, 2  as  well  as  in  the  Justus  Danckers  view 

1  Johannes  Nevius,  after  the  surrender  to  the  English  in  1664,  found  himself 
greatly  hampered  in  his  office  of  city  clerk,  by  reason  of  his  imperfect  knowledge 
of  the  English  language.  After  using  the  services  of  an  English  assistant  for  a 
time,  he  appears  to  have  given  up  his  office,  and  to  have  devoted  his  latter  years 
to  the  management  of  the  ferry  establishment  belonging  to  his  then  deceased 
father-in-law's  estate.  There  is  a  bill  extant  for  ferry  services  performed  by 
Johannes  Nevius,  which  was  presented  to  Secretary  Nicolls,  of  the  Colonial 
Government,  in  1676,  by  the  widow  of  Nevius  ;  she  had  previously,  in  1672,  upon 
her  petition  setting  forth  that  she  was  a  widow  "  with  six  small  helpless  chil- 
dren," been  allowed  an  extension  for  six  years  of  her  hnsband's  ferry  lease. 

2  Entitled,  "  Novi  Belgii,  Novseque  Angliae  necnon  partis  Virginiae  Tabula 

4 


50      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


shown  in  the  frontispiece  of  the  present  work,  three  tall 
buildings  fronting  the  East  River  shore  occupy  a  conspicuous 
position.  These  buildings  adjoin  one  another,  and  the  west- 
ernmost of  them  was  only  separated  by  an  alleyway  from  the 
house  of  Johannes  Nevius,  just  referred  to  above.  They 
were  all  erected,  as  may  be  asserted  with  much  positiveness, 
between  the  years  1647  and  1651,  though  the  sites  of  one  or 
two  of  them  may  have  been  occupied  by  earlier  and  smaller 
buildings.  The  westernmost  of  the  three  houses  was  in  1655 
the  property  of  Captain  Paulus  Leendertsen  van  der  Grift, 
an  old  resident  of  New  Amsterdam,  who  with  his  brother 
Jacob  is  supposed  to  have  come  over  from  Amsterdam  to 
New  Netherland  a  number  of  years  before  the  date  men- 
tioned. Captain  Van  der  Grift  was  in  the  service  of  the 
West  India  Company  as  early  as  1614,  in  which  year,  at  the 
island  of  Curacoa,  he  was  appointed  to  the  command  of  the 
ship  "Neptune,"  in  which  Fortune  was  not  always  favorable 
to  him,  for  his  declaration  is  still  extant  that  in  the  following 
year  he  was  driven  by  stress  of  weather  to  the  coast  of  Ire- 
land, where  he  had  to  land  and  to  sell  a  part  of  his  cargo  of 
tobacco  consigned  to  Amsterdam. 

Captain  Van  der  Grift  appears  to  have  been  in  considerable 
favor  with  Director-General  Stuyvesant,  who  in  1647,  at  the 
beginning  of  his  administration,  appointed  Van  der  Grift 
Superintendent  of  Naval  Equipments  at  New  Amsterdam, 
and  one  of  the  City  Surveyors;  he  likewise  gave  him  a  seat 
in  the  first  administrative  council  under  his  regime.  The 
Captain,  however,  did  not  allow  his  sense  of  justice  to  be 

multis  in  locis  Emendata a  Nicolo  Joannis  Visschero."  This  view,  which  in  its  way 
is  a  finished  production,  and  almost  the  only  one  we  possess  of  New  Amsterdam, 
drawn  with  a  due  regard  to  the  rules  of  perspective,  is,  there  can  be  little  doubt, 
the  work  of  Augustyn  Heermans,  whose  storehouse  forms  a  conspicuous  feature 
in  it.  The  prominent  points  of  interest  in  the  town  are  all  designated  by  Dutch 
inscriptions ;  and  the  city  tavern,  which,  in  the  beginning  of  the  year  1653,  became 
the  Town  Hall,  or  "  Stadt  Huys,"  and  is  always  spoken  of  thereafter  by  that  desig- 
nation, is  still  called  the  "  Stadts  Herbergh,"  or  tavern.  In  the  second  edition  of 
Adriaen  van  der  Donck's  "  Beschrijving  van  Nieuw  Nederlandt,"  in  1656,  a  rough 
copy  of  this  view,  without  the  inscriptions,  is  inserted,  whence  it  has  frequently 
been  spoken  of  as  the  Van  der  Donck  view.  The  relations  of  this  view  to  the 
one  of  Justus  Danckers  have  been  discussed  in  an  appendix  to  this  volume. 


VAN  DER  GRIFT'S  WAREHOUSE  51 


overbalanced  by  Stuyvesant's  favors,  and  in  1656,  being 
appointed  arbitrator  with  Captain  Thomas  Willet  to  dispose 
of  a  claim  made  against  the  Director-General  by  one  Richard 
Lord,  a  merchant  of  Hartford,  for  damages  for  the  non-per- 
formance of  a  trading  contract,  he  joined  Captain  Willet  in 
reporting  in  favor  of  a  judgment  against  Stuyvesant  for  200 
pounds  sterling. 

As  early  as  1644,  Captain  Van  der  Grift  is  said  to  have 
been  in  possession  of  the  lot  upon  't  Water  on  which  his 
warehouse  was  afterwards  erected,  but  he  only  received  his 
formal  grant  of  the  land  on  the  19th  of  July,  1649,  at  which 
date  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  building  was  com- 
pleted. There  can  be  little  doubt  that  it  is  this  edifice  that 
is  referred  to  in  the  historic  "  Vertoogh,"  or  "  Remonstrance," 
presented  to  the  States-General  by  Adriaen  van  der  Donck 
and  others,  to  call  attention  to  the  abuses  prevailing  in  the 
Colony  of  New  Netherland,  which  document  bears  date 
July  28,  1649:  "Paulus  Lenaertse  hath  but  trifling  wages, 
and  yet  has  built  a  better  dwelling-house  here  than  any  other 
person.  How  this  is  done  is  too  deep  for  us,  for  though  the 
Director  is  aware  of  these  things,  he  nevertheless  observes 
silence  when  Paulus  Lenaertse  begins  to  get  excited,  which 
he  would  not  suffer  from  any  other  person,  and  this  gives 
rise  to  unfavorable  surmises."  As  a  man  of  whom  Stuyve- 
sant stood  in  awe,  the  choleric  Captain  must  have  commanded 
a  high  degree  of  respect  in  the  town. 

Of  the  nature  of  the  business  carried  on  at  Captain  Van  der 
Grift's  warehouse  we  have  not  much  information.  It  was, 
however,  for  a  considerable  period  the  principal  shipping 
office  of  New  Amsterdam  at  which  intelligence  was  to  be 
had,  and  arrangements  were  to  be  made  for  freight  and  pas- 
sage when  vessels  were  "up  for  the  Netherlands."  As  the 
Captain  kept  up  an  active  life,  occasionally  himself  making 
voyages,  —  in  1654  he  was  commissioned  as  commander  of 
the  ship  "  Dolphin  "  for  a  voyage  to  the  West  Indies,  —  his 
business  at  the  water-side  in  New  Amsterdam  must  have 
been  conducted  by  his  agents,  but  who  these  were  we  do  not 


52      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


know.  If  Captain  Van  der  Grift  ever  actually  resided  in  this 
house  it  was  probably  for  no  long  period,  for  at  an  early  date 
he  built  a  residence  upon  the  North  River,  west  of  Broad- 
way, where,  in  the  Indian  attack  of  1655,  he  is  said  to  have 
been  severely  wounded  by  a  blow  from  an  axe,  at  the  hands 
of  one  of  the  savages. 

After  the  surrender  to  the  English  in  1G64,  Captain 
Van  der  Grift  was  one  of  the  irreconcilables,  and  in  or  about 
the  year  1671  he  closed  out  his  interests  in  New  York,  by 
the  sale  of  all  his  real  estate  to  various  parties,  and  returned 
to  the  Netherlands.  His  storehouse  on  't  Water,  above 
referred  to,  occupied  the  site  of  the  present  building,  No.  31 
Pearl  Street. 

It  was  apparently  a  short  time  prior  to  the  year  1649 
that  the  Director-General  and  Council  decided  to  build  a 
more  spacious  and  substantial  storehouse,  or  "pack-huys," 
for  the  West  India  Company  at  New  Amsterdam,  than  it  had 
previously  possessed.  The  building  erected  in  pursuance  of 
this  resolution  stood  next  eastward  from  Captain  Van  der 
Grift's  warehouse,  and  was  the  middle  one  of  the  three  tall 
structures  previously  referred  to  as  appearing  upon  the 
Visscher  and  upon  the  Justus  Danckers  views  of  New  Am- 
sterdam. The  edifice  was  probably  of  brick,  and  is  without 
doubt  the  one  referred  to  in  a  communication  written  in 
the  year  1649,  in  which  we  find  the  economical  Board  of 
Directors  of  the  West  India  Company,  at  Amsterdam,  cen- 
suring the  authorities  of  New  Netherland  "for  building  a 
storehouse,  or  undertaking  the  same,  one  hundred  feet  long 
and  nineteen  feet  broad,  without  knowing  precisely  what 
for."  This  structure  was  evidently  used,  in  part,  at  the 
last-mentioned  date  as  a  custom-house;  for  in  "The  Peti- 
tion of  the  Commonalty  "  to  the  home  authorities,  made  in 
that  year,  speaking  of  importations  into  the  Colony,  "the 
cargo,"  say  the  petitioners,  "is  discharged  into  the  Com- 
pany's warehouse,  and  there  it  proceeds  so  as  to  be  a  grief 
and  vexation  to  behold,  for  it  is  all  measured  anew,  un- 


THE  "PACK-HUYS 


53 


packed,  thrown  about  and  counted,  without  either  rule  or 
order;  besides,  the  Company's  servants  bite  sharp  and  carry 
away." 

When,  in  1664,  New  Netherland  was  surrendered  to  the 
English,  the  pack-huys  was  confiscated  as  being  the  property 
of  the  West  India  Company,  and  the  building  became  the 
custom-house  of  the  new  administration,  for  which  pur- 
pose it  was  used  until  the  middle  of  the  following  century, 
when,  having  been  negligently  allowed  by  the  colonial 
authorities  to  fall  into  disrepair,  it  came  to  be  considered 
dangerous,  and  was  presented  as  a  nuisance  by  the  Grand 
Jury  about  the  year  1750,  soon  after  which  it  was  ordered 
to  be  demolished,  the  Custom-House  having  been  in  the 
mean  time  removed  to  the  western  side  of  Broadway.  The 
site  of  this  interesting  building,  the  worn  threshold  of  which 
must  have  been  trodden  by  nearly  every  man  of  prominence 
in  the  business  and  political  life  of  New  Amsterdam  and  of 
New  York  in  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  and  in  the 
first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  was  the  westerly  portion 
of  the  present  large  tea  warehouse,  No.  33  Pearl  Street. 

The  third,  or  easternmost  of  the  three  prominent  houses 
upon  the  Visscher  and  Danckers  views  of  New  Amsterdam, 
referred  to  above,  had  been  built  before  the  year  1651,  by 
Augustyn  Heermans,  of  whom  a  more  extended  notice  will 
be  given  hereafter,  in  connection  with  his  residence  in  what 
was  called  the  Smits  Vly.  At  an  early  date  —  certainly  as 
early  as  1644,  and  in  all  probability  for  a  number  of  years 
before  that  time  —  Augustyn  Heermans  had  been  the  agent 
or  factor  at  New  Amsterdam  of  the  mercantile  firm  of  Peter 
Gabry  and  Sons,  of  Amsterdam.  No  mention  is  made  of  the 
site  of  the  first  trading  house  or  store  of  Heermans,  but  it  is 
very  likely  to  have  been  the  same  spot  where  afterwards, 
about  1650,  he  erected  a  substantial  warehouse,  the  descrip- 
tion of  which  is  still  extant.  The  building  was,  so  we  are 
told,  twenty-eight  feet  broad  and  sixty-four  feet  long  (about 
twenty-six  by  fifty-nine  English  feet),  "  with  a  cellar  under 


54      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


the  whole."  Its  walls  were  two  feet  in  thickness,  and  it  was 
"  three  royal  stories  high ; "  that  is,  three  full  or  high-ceiled 
stories,  not  including  the  lofts  under  the  tall-gabled  roof.  In 
the  rear  it  appears  to  have  possessed  an  out-kitchen,  fitting 
it  for  a  residence  as  well  as  for  a  storehouse.  This  spacious 
building  seems  to  have  been  in  part  used  as  a  tobacco  ware- 
house, in  which  trade  Heermans  was  largely  interested,  for  in 
a  petition  made  by  him,  in  1658,  for  permission  to  make  a 
voyage  to  the  Dutch  and  French  West  Indies,  he  describes 
himself  as  "the  first  beginner  of  the  Virginia  tobacco  trade." 
The  site  of  this  building  is  at  present  covered  by  the  easterly 
portion  of  the  warehouse,  No.  33  Pearl  Street,  and  by  the 
westerly  portion  of  No.  35. 

Heermans  was  also  engaged  in  business  adventures  of  a 
different  nature,  for  in  1646  we  find  him,  with  several  other 
citizens  of  New  Amsterdam,  partners  in  a  small  privateer 
called  "La  Garce,"  which  annoyed  the  Spaniards  a  good  deal, 
but  which  finally  made  an  illegal  capture  which  must  have 
entailed  considerable  loss  upon  her  owners.  It  may  have 
been  owing  to  this  cause  that,  in  1651,  Augustyn  Heermans 
had  fallen  into  financial  difficulties ;  and  upon  the  17th  of 
July  of  that  year,  he  made  a  conveyance  of  his  warehouse  on 
't  Water  to  Cornelis  van  Werckhoven,  as  curator,  or  trustee 
of  the  estate  of  Peter  Gabry,  deceased,  the  head  of  the 
Amsterdam  firm  of  which  Heermans  was  the  factor.  His 
other  creditors,  however,  began  to  press  Heermans,  and  in 
1652  he  found  himself  obliged  to  leave  New  Amsterdam 
temporarily,  and  to  make  an  assignment  of  his  property  to 
his  neighbor,  Captain  Paulus  Leendertsen  van  der  Grift,  and 
to  Allard  Anthony.  A  settlement,  however,  was  soon  made 
with  the  creditors,  and  on  the  8th  of  May,  1653,  we  find  the 
latter  executing  an  agreement  to  abide  by  the  valuation 
which  should  be  placed  by  arbitrators  upon  the  warehouse 
which  had  been  previously  conveyed  in  trust  for  the  Gabrys, 
and  which,  as  it  would  appear,  the  creditors  claimed  had 
been  [put  in  at  a  figure  below  its  value.  The  arbitrators 
accordingly  reported  that  the  building  was   worth  8500 


SECRETARY  VAN  TIENHOVEN  55 


guilders,  or  about  $3400  of  the  present  currency.  No 
further  opposition  appears  to  have  been  made  by  the  cred- 
itors, and  Heermans  was  soon  upon  his  feet  again,  finan- 
cially. The  warehouse  remained  in  the  possession  of  the 
Gabrys  till  the  English  capture  of  New  Amsterdam,  in  1664, 
when  the  building,  like  the  pack-huys  adjoining,  was  con- 
fiscated on  the  ground  that  it  belonged  to  the  subjects  of  a 
hostile  foreign  State.  A  few  years  afterwards  we  find  it  in 
the  occupation  of  Captain  William  Dyre,  collector  of  the 
port  of  New  York.  By  the  Danker  and  Sluyter  view,  of 
1679,  it  would  appear  that  prior  to  that  date  this  building, 
with  the  adjoining  pack-huys,  had  been  newly  fronted,  giving 
the  two  structures  the  appearance  of  one  edifice,  of  consider- 
able size. 

The  two  large  modern  warehouses,  Nos.  33  and  35  Pearl 
Street,  occupy  sites  around  which  many  interesting  associa- 
tions cluster.  In  addition  to  that  portion  of  the  buildings 
upon  the  site  of  which  stood  the  edifices  already  described, 
the  eastern  portion  of  No.  35  Pearl  Street  was,  in  1655,  the 
site  of  a  dwelling-house  of  little  less  interest.  Here  might 
have  been  seen  daily,  passing  to  and  from  this  house  at 
the  period  named,  or  taking  his  ease  upon  fine  days,  at  its 
threshold,  in  the  very  rare  intervals  of  his  leisure,  —  for  he 
led  a  busy  life,  —  a  middle-aged  man  of  corpulent  habit 
"with  red  and  bloated  visage  and  light  hair."  This  was 
Cornelis  van  Tienhoven,  Secretary  of  the  Council,  more 
particularly  identified  than  any  other  individual  with  the 
history  of  New  Netherland  during  at  least  a  score  of  the 
earlier  years  of  its  existence.  While  little  is  known  about 
the  younger  years  of  this  man, 1  we  find  that  he  early  acquired 
an  influence  in  the  government  of  New  Netherland,  which 
he  preserved  under  such  dissimilar  administrations  as  those 
of  Directors  Van  Twiller,  Kieft,  and  Stuyvesant.  This  in- 
fluence he  managed  to  preserve  too  in  spite  of  many  rash 

1  According  to  Valentine,  he  was  book-keeper  of  wages  for  the  West  India 
Company,  as  early  as  1633. 


56       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


and  unfortunate  schemes,  for  which  he  was  in  large  measure 
responsible,  and  in  spite  of  the  incessant  attacks  of  his 
enemies,  who  comprised  a  large  part  of  the  community.  His 
character  has  been  drawn  in  the  "Vertoogh,"  or  "Remon- 
strance of  New  Netherland,"  in  1649,  by  no  friendly  hand, 
but  in  a  manner  which  seems  to  be  justified  by  the  facts  we 
know  of  him.  "He  is,"  say  the  authors  of  this  vigorous 
paper,  "  crafty,  subtle,  intelligent,  sharp-witted,  —  good  gifts 
when  properly  applied.  .  .  .  He  is  a  great  adept  at  dissimu- 
lation, and  even  when  laughing,  intends  to  bite,  and  pro- 
fesses the  warmest  friendship  where  he  hates  the  deepest. 
...  In  his  words  and  acts  he  is  loose,  false,  deceitful,  and 
given  to  lying ;  prodigal  of  promises,  and  when  it  comes  to 
performance,  there  is  nobody  at  home.  .  .  .  Now,  if  the 
voice  of  the  people  be  the  voice  of  God,  of  this  man  hardly 
any  good  can  with  truth  be  said,  and  no  evil  concealed."  It 
was  Cornells  van  Tienhoven  who  shared  with  Kieft  the 
odium  of  the  Indian  War  of  1643,  as  well  as  of  the  earlier 
expedition  against  the  Raritans  which  resulted  in  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  first  colonists  of  Staten  Island.  Of  his  flagrant 
immorality  even  the  sanctimonious  Stuyvesant  had  full 
knowledge.  During  his  sojourn  in  the  Netherlands  in 
1650-51,  while  acting  as  Stuyvesant's  agent  to  refute  the 
charges  made  against  the  colonial  government,  he  almost 
openly  defied  the  States-General,1  yet  he  contrived  to  remain 
in  apparently  undiminished  authority  at  New  Amsterdam, 
defying  and  harassing  his  enemies  as  usual. 

At  the  period  of  our  survey,  however,  the  Secretary's  time 
was  growing  short,  and  it  was  in  June  of  the  next  year, 
1656,  that  he  appeared  with  apparently  undiminished  assur- 
ance before  the  burgomasters  of  the  town,  and,  announcing 
that  he  had  been  dismissed  from  office,  he  requested  that  a 
formal  certificate  might  be  given  to  him  of  his  efficiency  in 
the  office  of  schout,  or  sheriff,  which  he  had  also  held.  In 
the  fall  of  the  same  year  he  disappeared  from  New  Amster- 
dam; some  articles  of  his  attire  found  on  the  river  shore 

1  See  post,  page  119. 


VAN  TIENHOVEN'S  FAMILY 


57 


induced  the  belief  that  he  had  committed  suicide,  while 
many  stoutly  asserted  that  he  had  absconded  to  get  out  of 
the  reach  of  his  numerous  enemies.  There  seems  to  be, 
however,  no  reliable  evidence  that  he  was  ever  heard  of 
afterwards;  and  there  would  appear  to  have  been  little 
opportunity  for  a  man  of  such  prominence  as  the  ex-Sec- 
retary to  get  away  from  New  Netherland  without  discovery 
and  to  keep  himself  in  complete  concealment. 

Van  Tienhoven's  residence  on  't  Water  (which  does  not 
appear  upon  the  Visscher  view  of  New  Amsterdam  of  1651 
or  1652)  had  not  been  built  by  the  Secretary  himself,  but 
probably  by  one  Jacob  Haie,  from  whom  Van  Tienhoven 
had  bought  it  in  the  spring  of  1653,  the  house  appearing  to 
have  been  then  recently  erected.  Next  to  it,  upon  the  east, 
lay  a  vacant  lot  composed  of  a  part  of  the  then  closed 
Church  Lane,  —  originally  a  continuation  of  the  Brugh 
Steegh.  This  had  been  granted  in  the  early  part  of  16-47, 
upon  the  breaking  up  of  the  old  church  property  here,  to 
Oloff  Stevensen  van  Cortlandt,  who  however  did  not  build 
upon  it,  but  sold  it  to  Jacob  Varrevanger  within  a  year  or 
two;  and  in  1655,  the  year  of  our  survey,  it  was  acquired  by 
Van  Tienhoven,  who  seems  to  have  built  upon  it  before  his 
disappearance  from  New  Netherland.  The  Secretary-,  prior 
to  1638,  had  married  Rachel  Vinje,  the  stepdaughter  of  Jan 
Damen,  one  of  the  leading  men  of  the  Colony ;  and  after  the 
disappearance  of  her  husband,  she  lived  here  with  her  young 
children  for  a  few  years  till  her  death  in  1663.  The  chil- 
dren, of  whom  Lucas,  the  eldest,  was  about  fourteen  years  of 
age  at  his  mother's  death,  and  his  sister  Jannetje  was  six, 
appear  to  have  been  cared  for  by  their  uncle  Pieter  Stouten- 
burgh,1  and  after  they  had  grown  up  and  come  into  posses- 
sion of  the  considerable  landed  estate  left  by  their  parents,2 

1  He  had  married  Aefje  van  Tienhoven,  sister  of  the  Secretary,  in  1649. 

2  Rachel  van  Tienhoven  had  inherited  one-fourth  part  of  the  Damen  farm, 
lying  between  Wall  Street  and  Maiden  Lane,  while  Cornelis,  her  husband,  besides 
several  parcels  of  land  in  the  town  proper,  was  the  owner  of  the  farm  lying 
between  the  modern  Maiden  Lane  and  Ann  Street. 


58       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Lucas  van  Tienhoven,  who  became  a  physician  of  promi- 
nence, occupied  for  many  years  the  former  residence  of  his 
father  on  't  Water,  while  his  sister  Jannetje,  who  had 
married  a  person  named  John  Smith,  resided  in  the  house 
adjoining  upon  the  east  on  the  site  of  the  present  No.  37 
Pearl  Street. 

The  dingy  warehouses  of  the  present  day,  in  the  locality 
at  which  we  have  now  arrived,  with  their  closed  shutters, 
give  the  impression  that  they  are  in  a  condition  of  perma- 
nent slumber,  only  waking  up  at  intervals  to  receive  or  to 
discharge  an  occasional  truck-load  of  merchandise,  and  then 
relapsing  into  somnolence.  There  is  little  in  the  surround- 
ings now  to  call  up  ecclesiastical  associations,  yet  here,  upon 
the  site  of  the  warehouse,  No.  39  Pearl  Street,1  stood  the 
first  church  building  erected  between  the  Plymouth  Colony 
and  Virginia  (the  churches  of  which  settlements  antedated 
this  by  but  very  few  years),  and  where  Dominie  Bogardus 
preached  to  the  ancestors  of  many  of  the  principal  New  York 
families.    Not  even  a  cheap  memorial  tablet  marks  the  spot. 

The  church  edifice,  which  was  constructed  of  wood,  in  the 
year  1633,  was  doubtless  not  built  for  architectural  effect; 
since  critics  speak  of  it,  at  the  time  of  the  building  of  the 
new  church  within  the  fort,  as  "a  mean  barn."2  The  waters 
of  the  East  River  washed  the  shore  a  few  rods  in  front  of 
the  entrance  to  the  church,  from  which,  upon  fine  Sabbath 
mornings,  the  congregation  must  have  often  looked  across  to 
the  white  sand  bluffs  of  the  heights  of  Long  Island,  shining 
in  the  sun,  and  crowned  by  unbroken  forests  which  extended 
to  the  horizon.  At  the  west  side  of  the  building  a  narrow 
lane  or  passage  ran  through  from  Brugh  Straet  (modern 

1  And  probably  upon  a  few  feet  of  the  building  No.  37. 

2  The  people  generally,  however,  are  stated  to  have  been  opposed  to  the  build- 
ing of  the  new  church  within  the  walls  of  the  fort,  and  this  measure  is  described 
by  contemporary  writers  as  having  been  largely  the  work  of  Director  Kieft  him- 
self, who  may  even  then  have  had  in  contemplation  his  plan  of  exterminating 
the  neighboring  Indians,  and  was  therefore  desirous  of  providing  against  future 
contingencies. 


THE  OLD  CHURCH  AND  PARSONAGE  59 


Bridge  Street)  to  the  shore,  while  upon  its  east  side,  and 
probably  fronting  the  Brugh  Straet,  stood  the  modest  parson- 
age with  the  Dominie's  stable  near  it,  this  latter  structure 
standing  apparently  upon  the  lane  and  in  the  rear  of  the 
church.  It  was  at  this  parsonage,1  in  all  probability,  that  the 
historic  wedding  took  place,  in  the  fall  of  1642,  of  Doctor 
Hans  Kiersted  to  Dominie  Bogardus's  eldest  stepdaughter, 
Sara  Roelofse.  Director-General  Kieft,  who  was  then  on 
good  terms  with  the  Dominie,  was  present,  and  had  a  plan 
for  getting  a  liberal  subscription  for  the  new  church  upon 
this  occasion.  "The  Director,"  say  the  authors  of  the 
"Remonstrance  of  New  Netherland,"  "thought  this  a  good 
time  for  his  purpose,  and  set  to  work  after  the  fourth  or  fifth 
drink;  and  he  himself  setting  a  liberal  example,  let  the 
wedding  guests  sign  whatever  they  were  disposed  to  give 
towards  the  church.  Each  then,  with  a  light  head,  sub- 
scribed away  at  a  handsome  rate,  one  competing  with  the 
other,  and  although  some  heartily  repented  it  when  their 
senses  came  back,  they  were  obliged  nevertheless  to  pay." 

When  the  new  church  in  the  fort  was  sufficiently  advanced 
in  building,  so  that  religious  services  might  be  held  within 
it,  and  about  the  year  1643  or  1644,  the  old  church  building 
became  a  sort  of  "lumber  house"  of  the  West  India  Com- 
pany, where  tobacco,  furs,  and  other  articles  were  stored  and 
prepared  for  shipment,  and  where  wood  was  piled  and  sawed, 
sometimes  by  prisoners  serving  out  sentences.  In  1647  the 
Church  Lane  and  the  parsonage  were  sold, —  the  latter  to  one 
Pieter  Lourensen.  Finally,  in  1656,  the  Company  decided 
to  sell  the  old  church  at  auction,  and  upon  such  sale  it  was 
purchased  by  Jacob  van  Couwenhoven,  a  trader  and  general 
speculator,  who  soon  transferred  it  to  Isaac  de  Foreest;  the 
latter  owned  the  building  many  years,  and  it  appears  to  have 
been  generally  used  as  a  warehouse  of  some  description,  but 
it  was  afterwards  made  a  dwelling-house,  and  was  for  a  long 

1  The  site  of  this  parsonage  would  appear  to  have  been  the  rear  of  the 
modern  building,  No.  45  Pearl  Street.  There  is  here,  for  some  reason,  a  break  in 
the  consecutive  numbering  of  the  modern  houses. 


60       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


time  the  residence  of  Allan!  Anthony  or  of  his  family;  it 
was  standing  as  late  as  1718.  If,  as  seems  to  be  the  case,  it 
is  the  building  prominently  shown  near  the  shore  and  east  of 
the  pack-huys  of  the  West  India  Company,  in  the  Visscher 
view  of  New  Amsterdam,  it  would  appear  to  have  been  a  low 
structure  with  not  the  slightest  pretensions  to  ornamentation 
of  any  description ;  it  was  doubtless  sufficiently  spacious  in 
its  ground-plan,  but  presents  a  rather  "squatty"  appearance, 
and  the  term  "barn,"  as  applied  to  it,  is  not  inapt.1 

Beyond  the  church  and  the  parsonage,  as  far  as  the  ditch, 
or  "graft,"  in  the  present  Broad  Street,  the  ground  was  open 
and  ungranted  at  the  time  of  our  survey,  but  in  the  following 
year  1656,  the  remainder  of  the  ground  embraced  in  the 
present  block  between  Bridge  and  Pearl  streets  was  granted, 
in  four  small  parcels  to  different  persons,  who  soon  built  upon 
their  lots  here. 

1  As  to  apparent  defects  occurring  just  at  this  point  in  the  Justus  Dauckers 
view  of  New  Amsterdam,  see  remarks  in  Appendix  I.,  to  this  volume. 


CHAPTER  VII 


ADAM  R  OE  LA  NT  SEN,  THE  FIRST  SCHOOLMASTER  IN  NEW 
AMSTERDAM,  AND  HIS  HOUSE  ON  STONE  STREET.— 
CAPTAIN  WILLEM  TOMASSEN 

From  hence  the  low  murmur  of  his  pupils'  voices,  conning  over  their  lessons, 
might  be  heard  in  a  drowsy  summer's  day,  like  the  hum  of  a  beehive,  interrupted 
now  and  then  by  the  authoritative  voice  of  the  master,  in  the  tone  of  menace  or 
command ;  or,  peradventure,  by  the  appalling  sound  of  the  birch,  as  he  urged 
some  tardy  loiterer  along  the  flowery  path  of  knowledge. 

Irving:  "Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow." 

WE  take  our  station  again  at  the  garden  attached  to 
Philip  Geraerdy's  White  Horse  tavern,  which  has 
been  already  described  as  having  been  upon  the  north  side  of 
Stone  Street  near  Whitehall.  Here  the  proprietor,  hoeing 
his  beans  and  cabbages  and  parsnips  in  the  early  summer 
morning,  has  probabty  often  stopped  to  discuss  the  news  of 
the  day  with  his  neighbor,  Adam  Roelantsen,  the  first  school- 
master of  New  Amsterdam,  over  the  fence  of  rough  palisades 
which  divided  their  respective  gardens.  Adam  Roelantsen 
Groen  —  for  that  was  the  full  name,  of  which  he  occasionally 
made  use  —  came  over  from  the  ancient  little  town  of 
Dockum,  situated  in  Friesland,  in  the  extreme  north  of  the 
Netherlands  and  within  six  or  eight  miles  of  the  shore  of  the 
North  Sea,  where  it  stood  surrounded  by  rich  but  treeless  and 
monotonous  meadows,  and  by  the  numerous  salt-pans  along 
the  river  Ee. 

Adam  Roelantsen  arrived  from  the  Netherlands  while  still 
a  young  man  and  as  one  of  the  earlier  colonists ;  he  was  born 
about  1606,  and  was  at  New  Amsterdam  before  the  year  1633. 
The  Frisians  seem  frequently  to  possess  an  aptitude  for  the 
exact  sciences,  particularly  for  mathematics,  which  renders 


62      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


them  valuable  as  schoolteachers,  but  as  to  Roelantsen's  labors 
in  this  capacity,  very  little  is  known.  He  could  hardly  have 
taught  many  pupils  at  his  earliest  house,  for  it  was  very 
small,  having  in  all  probability  been  one  of  the  original  log 
and  bark  cottages  of  the  settlement;  it  stood  upon  a  mere 
slip  of  land  but  little  larger  than  the  house  itself,  and  which 
lay  between  Geraerdy's  garden  and  the  Brouwer  or  Stone 
Street,  and  was  probably  the  remains  of  a  larger  plot  enclosed 
before  the  street  was  projected.  To  the  eastward,  on  the 
north  side  of  Stone  Street,  Roelantsen  had  a  garden  of  fair 
extent,  rather  more  than  fifty  by  one  hundred  feet  in  area. 
A  curious  fact,  showing  the  condition  of  the  rising  village,  is 
that  in  1641,  Jan  Damen's  cattle,  pasturing  on  the  West 
India  Company's  land  above  the  present  Beaver  Street,  leased 
by  Damen,  broke  out  and  made  their  way  into  this  garden  of 
Roelantsen,  —  there  being  apparently  at  that  time  no  enclosed 
land  lying  between,  —  where  they  committed  depredations  for 
which  he  was  awarded  damages  in  the  sum  of  twenty-three 
carolus  guilders,  —  some  eight  or  ten  dollars  of  the  present 
currency. 

Roelantsen  possessed  one  trait  which  must  have  seriously 
impaired  his  usefulness  as  an  instructor:  he  seems  to  have 
been  fond  of  prying  into  his  neighbor's  private  affairs ;  and 
he  not  only  kept  a  sharp  eye  on  their  actions,  but  when  he 
discovered  anything  particularly  racy,  he  retailed  it  out  with 
great  unction.  This,  as  early  as  the  year  1638,  had  brought 
out  quite  a  crop  of  slander  prosecutions,  not  only  against 
Roelantsen,  but  by  him  against  some  of  his  assailants.  These 
usually  terminated,  however,  after  the  New  Amsterdam 
fashion,  in  which  the  parties,  after  accusing  one  another  of 
the  most  villanous  actions,  rushed  to  the  court  for  redress, 
and  when  the  cause  came  on  for  hearing,  —  either  because 
they  had  no  evidence  to  support  or  to  defeat  the  charges,  or 
else  for  the  purpose  of  saving  the  costs  of  the  trial,  —  they 
commonly  retracted  all  that  had  been  said  on  either  side,  and 
gave  each  other  clean,  not  to  say  complimentary,  bills  of 
character,  which  were  duly  spread  upon  the  minutes  of  the 


ROELANTSEN,  THE  SCHOOLMASTER  63 


court.  Roelantsen,  indeed,  was  not  a  popular  man,  and  as  early 
as  1643  he  had  a  rival  at  New  Amsterdam  in  the  person  of  Jan 
Stevensen,  another  schoolmaster ;  but  as  little  is  known  of  the 
latter  in  that  capacity  as  of  Roelantsen  himself.  The  proba- 
bilities are,  however,  that  Adam  was  forced  to  resort  to  other 
means  of  eking  out  a  livelihood  for  himself  and  for  his  young 
family.  Mr.  Valentine  says,  from  certain  court  proceedings 
in  1638,  that  there  is  "some  reason  to  suppose  that  the  town 
schoolmaster  also  took  in  washing."  This  was,  in  fact,  a  suit 
by  Roelantsen  for  the  washing  of  defendant's  linen,  in  which 
the  defence  was  that  "  the  year  is  not  yet  elapsed."  It  evi- 
dently referred  to  the  business,  still  conducted  to  a  consider- 
able extent  in  Holland,  of  contracting  for  the  washing  for 
various  periods,  for  individuals  or  for  families,  the  work  being 
carried  on  by  employes  of  the  contractor. 

Affairs  did  not  thrive  with  Adam  Roelantsen,  who  seems  to 
have  found  himself  considerably  burdened  with  debts.  Part 
of  these  were  no  doubt  incurred  in  building  a  new  and  larger 
house  for  himself  a  little  to  the  east  of  his  old  one,  upon  the 
north  side  of  Stone  Street,  in  the  spring  of  1642.  His  origi- 
nal dwelling,  which  stood  just  about  where  the  open  court  of 
the  Produce  Exchange  now  is,  on  Stone  Street,  was  occupied 
for  a  short  time  after  the  completion  of  the  new  one,  by 
negroes  of  the  West  India  Company,  but  towards  the  end  of 
1642,  he  sold  the  materials  of  the  old  building  to  one  Uldrich 
Klein. 

Prior  to  1646,  Roelantsen,  taking  with  him  his  eldest  son, 
then  a  small  boy,  had  departed  for  the  Netherlands,  upon 
what  business  we  are  uninformed.  During  his  absence  his 
wife  Lyntie  Martense  died,  leaving  several  small  children 
(the  youngest  of  whom  were  only  about  four  and  two  years 
old  respectively),  with  no  one  to  look  after  them.  Upon  the 
9th  of  March,  1646,  the  sad  plight  of  the  children  was  brought 
to  the  attention  of  the  members  of  the  Council,  who  after  due 
deliberation  adopted  the  somewhat  ponderous  resolution  of 
appointing  four  of  the  nearest  neighbors  —  to  wit :  Philip 
Geraerdy,  Dr.  Hans  Kiersted,  Jan  Stevensen,  the  schoolmas- 


64      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


ter,  and  Oloff  Stevensen  van  Cortlandt  —  as  curators  or 
guardians,  to  look  after  the  children  "  till  the  arrival  of  the 
father  or  some  news  of  him." 

At  last,  about  the  month  of  July  in  the  same  year,  Adam 
made  his  appearance  in  the  ship  "  St.  Jacob  "  from  Amster- 
dam, but  he  did  not  come  under  auspicious  circumstances. 
He  had  first  to  settle  with  the  authorities  for  removing  some 
of  his  goods  from  the  public  store  before  they  were  inspected ; 
and  after  this  he  was  sued  for  the  board  of  himself  and  his 
son  during  the  voyage,  by  the  owner  of  the  vessel :  he  was 
able,  however,  to  defeat  this  latter  claim  by  showing  that  the 
skipper  of  the  "  St.  Jacob  "  had  promised  him  his  passage  "  if 
he  would  perform  seaman's  work  on  the  vessel,  and  his  son 
said  the  prayers.*' 

There  may  be  some  just  grounds  for  suspicion  that  Adam 
Roelantsen  was  preparing  for  a  new  marriage,  for  in  the  fall 
of  1646,  we  find  him  contracting  for  new  wainscoting  and 
other  improvements  for  his  house ;  if  this  were  the  case,  his 
plans  were  seriously  interfered  with  by  an  untoward  occur- 
rence in  December  of  that  year.  He  had  about  that  time 
offered  a  grievous  insult  to  the  wife  of  one  of  his  neighbors, 
and  the  matter,  taken  in  connection  with  Adam's  previous 
doings,  was  brought  to  the  notice  of  the  Council ;  after  de- 
liberation that  body  adjudged  that  he  should  be  publicly 
flogged,  and  banished  from  the  Colony,  as  a  nuisance.  This 
sentence,  like  many  others  of  the  Council,  was  largely  in 
terror  em,  for  four  days  afterwards,  or  on  the  17th  of  Decem- 
ber, 1646,  they  entered  a  further  order :  "  In  consideration  that 
the  aforesaid  defendant  has  four  small  children,  without 
a  mother,  and  a  cold  winter  is  approaching,  the  actual  ban- 
ishment of  the  above  sentence  is  delayed  by  the  Director- 
General  and  Council  until  a  more  favorable  opportunity, 
when  the  defendant  may  leave  the  country."  Roelantsen 
remained  in  New  Netherland,  in  fact,  for  at  least  three  years 
longer,  but  during  the  earlier  portion  of  that  period  he  seems 
to  have  been  regarded  as  a  mere  privileged  prisoner,  and  per- 
haps was  such  in  a  legal  point  of  view.    The  carousing  fiscal, 


ROELANTSEN  AND  THE  FISCAL  65 

or  prosecutor,  Hendrick  van  Dyke,  seems  after  a  while  to 
have  found  Roelantsen  a  useful  person  to  attach  to  himself  as  a 
sort  of  servant  or  lackey ;  and  in  that  capacity  he  had  placed 
him,  one  evening  in  August,  1647,  to  keep  watch  before  one  of 
the  taverns  in  the  town,  within  which  the  fiscal  was  engaged 
in  some  parting  festivities,  in  all  probability,  with  some  of 
his  friends  who  were  just  on  the  point  of  departing  on  the 
fatal  voyage  of  the  "  Princess."  Just  why  Van  Dyke  needed 
a  sentinel  does  not  appear,  but  it  is  a  fair  conjecture  that  he 
feared  the  austerity  of  Director  Stuy vesant,  and  was  uncertain 
of  his  standing  in  the  new  regime  of  that  magistrate.  At 
any  rate,  the  attractions  of  the  tavern  proved  too  strong  for 
Roelantsen.  "  Some  time  afterwards,"  says  one  of  the  party 
present  at  the  tavern  upon  this  occasion,  "  said  Roelantsen 
came  in,  and  the  fiscal  asked,  4  What  are  you  doing  here? 
Why  do  you  not  watch  at  the  door  ? '  Said  Roelantsen 
answered  there  was  nothing  to  watch.  The  fiscal,  replying, 
said,  1  You  are  my  servant ;  you  must  wait  at  the  door,'  and 
at  the  same  time  struck  said  Roelantsen  with  the  back  of  his 
hand,  and  at  the  same  time  cried  out,  c  Throw  the  blackguard 
out  of  doors.'  Thereupon  the  above-named  Adam  Roelantsen 
was  thrust  out  of  doors."  It  may  perhaps  have  been  to  quiet 
the  hubbub  caused  by  this  affair  that  in  this  same  year  we 
find  Roelantsen  appointed  provoost,  or  jailer.  He  remained 
at  New  Amsterdam  till  the  latter  part  of  the  year  1649 ;  on 
the  4th  of  December  of  that  year,  being  then  apparently  on 
the  point  of  embarking  for  the  West  Indies,  he  executed  a 
letter  of  procuration  to  Jacob  Tysen  or  Marritje  Claes  "  to 
have  during  his  absence  a  fatherly  and  motherly  care  of  his 
children,  who  remain  here  with  them."  If  he  actually  left  New 
Amsterdam  at  this  time  he  must  have  found  his  way  back, 
for  in  1653  he  appears  to  have  been  a  "  wood  sawyer  "  for 
the  Company,  employed  in  its  packing  house,  the  old  church 
on  Pearl  Street.  He  seems  to  have  sunk  into  the  condition 
of  a  drudge  of  the  West  India  Company,  but  was  still  at  his 
old  tricks,  for  he  had  an  affray  with  one  Stoffel  Elsworth 
about  the  time  mentioned  and  received  a  severe  beating  from 

5 


66      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


him.  His  house  and  garden  on  Brouwer  or  Stone  Street 
had  been  taken  into  possession  by  one  Claes  Jansen  Rust, 
probably  a  mortgagee,  before  Roelantsen's  departure  in  1649, 
for,  in  August  of  the  same  year,  it  had  been  sold  by  the  cura- 
tors of  the  estate  of  the  former,  who  was  then  deceased,  to 
Captain  Willem  Tomassen,  "  Skipper,  under  God,  of  the 
'  Falconer,'  "  who  held  the  premises  at  the  period  of  our  survey 
in  1655. 

The  description  of  this  building,  which  stood  upon  the  eastern 
portion  of  the  site  of  the  present  Produce  Exchange,  has  been 
pretty  clearly  preserved  to  us.  It  was  a  clapboard  structure,  cov- 
ered with  a  reed  roof,  and  eighteen  by  thirty  feet  in  size.  Like 
most  of  the  buildings  in  the  thickly  settled  districts,  it  stood 
with  its  gable  end  to  the  street.  At  the  front  door  was  the  usual 
"  portal "  with  its  wooden  seats.  Outside  of  the  frame  a  chim- 
ney of  squared  timber  was  carried  up.  Within,  the  fireplace 
was  provided  with  the  luxury  of  a  mantelpiece,  and  we  may 
presume  that  the  living  room  was  ornamented  with  the  "  fifty- 
one  leaves  of  wainscot,"  for  which  Adam  Roelantsen  had  con- 
tracted a  few  years  before.  The  house  contained  the  usual 
"  bedstead  "  or  permanent  frame  built  in,  for  state  occasions, 
being  somewhat  of  the  nature  of  a  bunk.  It  is  perhaps  a 
little  difficult  to  go  back  now,  in  imagination,  to  the  time 
when  Adam  Roelantsen  and  his  family,  upon  the  first  mild 
evenings  in  spring,  could  listen  from  this  house  to  the  chorus 
of  the  "spring  peepers"  from  Blommaert's  Vly,  along  the 
present  Broad  Street ;  what  time  the  air,  perhaps,  was  heavy 
with  the  smell  of  burning  brush  from  Barent  Dircksen's  new 
clearing,  just  north  of  Maiden  Lane ;  yet  an  unbroken  succes- 
sion of  human  life  has,  in  fact,  occupied  this  spot  from  such 
period,  through  nearly  nine  generations. 

As  for  Captain  Willem  Tomassen,  he  appears  to  have  been 
a  resident  of  New  Netherland  prior  to  1643,  in  which  year  he 
leased  from  Coinelis  Dircksen  the  then  recently  established 
ferry  of  the  latter  to  Long  Island,  together  with  a  house,  gar- 
den, and  some  thirty  odd  acres  of  land  at  the  foot  of  what  is 
now  Fulton  Street,  in  Brooklyn,  but  which  was  then  a  mere 


CAPTAIN  WILLEM  TOMASSEN 


67 


track,  winding  np  a  wooded  ravine  to  afford  access  to  the  scat- 
tered clearings  in  the  vicinity  of  Gowanus  and  of  the  Wall- 
about.  How  long  Captain  Tomassen's  connection  with  the 
ferry  lasted  we  do  not  know.  He  was  a  man  of  other  affairs, 
and  in  1647  was  skipper  of  the  "  Great  Gerrit,"  trading  to 
Amsterdam.  He  seems  to  have  been  held  in  high  estimation 
by  Director-General  Stuyvesant,  for  soon  after  the  arrival  of 
the  latter  to  enter  upon  his  administration  at  New  Amsterdam, 
he  appointed,  in  May,  1647,  Captain  Tomassen  "  storekeeper  to 
watch  over  the  company's  effects,"  and  also  commander  of  the 
company's  ships  and  forces  in  the  absence  of  the  Director-Gen- 
eral. At  the  time  of  this  appointment,  Captain  Tomassen  gave 
up  the  command  of  his  vessel ;  but  two  years  later,  at  the  time  of 
his  purchase  of  the  Roelantsen  house,  we  find  him  in  command  of 
another  ship,  the  "  Valckemer,"  or  "  Falconer,"  not  a  very  large 
vessel,  as  in  1650,  when  he  brought  over  one  hundred  and  forty 
passengers  on  one  of  his  trips  from  the  Netherlands,  we  are 
informed  that  he  had  to  leave  many  behind  who  were  anxious  to 
take  passage  with  him,  but  for  whom  there  was  no  room  on 
board.  In  the  house  which  we  have  described  lie  resided  for 
several  years,  but  died  within  a  year  or  two  of  the  period  of  our 
survey.  He  was  fond  of  using  the  latinized  form  of  Gulielmus 
for  his  name,  which  was  corrupted  by  his  Dutch  neighbors  into 
"  Ielmer,"  by  which  appellation  he  occasionally  appears  upon 
the  old  records. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


SURGEON  VAN  DER  BOGAERDT  AND  HIS  HOUSE.  —  HIS 
TRAGICAL  DEATH.  — THE  PRIVATEER  "LA  GARCE"  AND 
HER  PRIZES.  — ISAAC  DE  FOREEST 

THERE  were  sinister  memories  connected  with  the  house 
on  the  north  side  of  Stone  Street,  next  to  that  of  Captain 
Tomassen,  as  we  proceed  eastward.  At  the  period  of  our 
survey,  in  1655,  it  was  owned  and  occupied  by  Isaac  de 
Foreest,  a  man  of  prominence  in  the  town,  but  its  first  owner 
and  builder  was  Harmanus  Meyndertsen  van  der  Bogaerdt,  for 
several  years  the  surgeon  of  the  West  India  Company  at  New 
Amsterdam. 

Few  men  commenced  life  in  New  Netherland  under  more 
favorable  auspices  than  did  Surgeon  Van  der  Bogaerdt.  Com- 
ing over  to  the  colony  in  the  ship  "  Eendracht  "  from  Amster- 
dam in  1630,  when  he  could  have  been  hardly  more  than  a 
medical  student,  he  seems  to  have  acquired  and  to  have  main- 
tained the  confidence  of  the  company's  superior  officers  for  a 
long  series  of  years.  He  appears,  indeed,  to  have  had  an  intimate 
acquaintance  with  many  of  the  brawls  and  scandals  that  took 
place  in  the  town,  but  probably  this  was  only  in  the  line  of 
his  professional  duties.  The  Director  and  Council  seem  to 
have  been  disposed  to  advance  Van  der  Bogaerdt  in  lines  not 
connected  with  his  profession,  and  in  1639  he  made  a  voyage 
to  the  West  Indies  as  supercargo  of  the  ship  "  Canary  Bird." 

As  to  his  ancestry  in  the  Netherlands,  or  as  to  the  particular 
place  from  which  he  came,  we  have  no  definite  information. 
From  his  will,  made  in  1638,  just  prior  to  his  voyage  to  the 
West  Indies  above  referred  to,  we  learn  that  his  wife,  Jelisje, 
was  the  daughter  of  one  Claes  Jansen,  from  Zierikzee,  in  Zea- 


THE  PRIVATEER  "LA  GARCE "  69 


land,  an  ancient  little  town  rich  with  its  memories  of  desperate 
struggles  with  the  Spaniards ;  the  fame  of  its  citizen-soldier, 
Lieve  Heere,  who  precipitated  himself  into  the  sea  voluntarily, 
lest  a  despatch  winch  he  was  carrying  through  the  lines  of 
the  Spanish  besiegers  should  fall  into  their  hands,  has  been 
the  theme  of  poets  in  other  tongues  besides  that  of  the 
Dutch. 

Surgeon  Van  der  Bogaerdt  appears  to  have  been  related, 
either  personally  or  on  the  side  of  his  wife,  to  Claes  Cornelissen 
Swits,  whose  tragical  death,  upon  his  solitary  bouwery,  at  the 
hands  of  an  Indian  in  1642,  was  one  of  the  remote  causes 
which  led  up  to  Kieft's  massacre  of  the  Indians  in  the  follow- 
ing year,  and  to  the  ruinous  struggle  which  succeeded  it. 
About  the  beginning  of  the  summer  of  1642,  we  find  the 
surgeon  selling  to  two  Englishmen,  James  Smith  and  William 
Brown,  his  interest  as  "co-heir"  in  the  plantation  of  the  mur- 
dered man.  At  about  the  same  time  he  executed  a  power  of 
attorney  to  one  of  his  brothers-in-law  in  the  Netherlands  to 
collect  certain  rents  for  him  in  the  province  of  Zealand ;  but 
whether  his  interest  in  these  arose  in  the  same  manner, 
by  reason  of  the  death  of  Claes  Cornelissen,  we  have  no 
information. 

As  early  as  1645,  Surgeon  Van  der  Bogaerdt  appears  to 
have  been  living  on  "  the  road,"  as  it  was  then  often  called, 
the  name  Brouwer  Straet  not  being  as  yet  in  much  use ;  here 
he  had  a  plot  of  between  fifty  and  sixty  feet  front,  for  which  he 
did  not  obtain  his  "  ground-brief  "  till  the  early  part  of  1647. 
His  residence  here  must  have  been  somewhat  interrupted,  how- 
ever, for  in  1646  he  had  obtained  the  important  appointment 
of  commissary  at  Fort  Orange,  or  Albany.  The  surgeon  ap- 
pears to  have  been  a  man  who  was  somewhat  well  to  do,  for 
in  the  early  part  of  1647,  he  had  purchased  a  share  in  the 
privateering  frigate  "La  Garce,"  to  which  a  previous  allu- 
sion has  been  made.  This  vessel,  under  the  command  of 
Captain  Blauveldt,  a  very  active  and  enterprising  officer,  had 
become  famous  at  New  Amsterdam  (where  she  paid  frequent 
visits)  as  early  as  1644,  when  Captain  Blauveldt  captured 


70      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


after  a  severe  conflict,  and  brought  into  port,  two  Spanish 
barks.  "  La  Garce  "  continued  assiduously  for  several  years 
to  hunt  Spanish  prizes,  but  unfortunately  Captain  Blauveldt 
was  so  busy  that  he  apparently  had  no  time  to  go  on  shore 
occasionally  to  get  information  as  to  whether  the  war  was 
still  continuing  between  the  United  Netherlands,  whose  com- 
mission he  carried,  and  the  government  of  Spain.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  long  struggle  between  those  countries  was  termi- 
nated by  a  treaty  of  peace  in  1647,  in  which  the  independence 
of  the  Netherlands  was  at  last  fully  acknowledged ;  though 
the  great  Treaty  of  Westphalia,  which  definitively  restored 
peace  to  the  larger  portion  of  Europe,  was  not  signed  until 
the  following  year.  In  view  of  these  events,  the  people  of 
New  Amsterdam  were  astounded  to  see,  in  the  spring  of  1649, 
about  a  year  and  a  half  after  the  treaty  of  peace,  Captain 
Blauveldt  and  "  La  Garce  "  come  sailing  proudly  up  the  har- 
bor, bringing  with  him  as  a  prize  the  Spanish  bark  "  Tabasco," 
which  he  had  captured  in  the  river  of  the  same  name,  empty- 
ing into  the  southern  part  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  Captain 
Blauveldt  could  not  understand  the  scruples  that  were  raised 
about  the  lawfulness  of  his  capture.  He  said  if  there  had 
been  a  treaty  of  peace  with  Spain,  he  had  never  heard  of  it. 
Besides  that,  he  said,  the  Spaniard  had  never  heard  of  it 
either,  and  when  he  summoned  her  to  surrender,  had  answered 
by  firing  upon  him.  Moreover,  he  insisted,  "  La  Garce," 
though  sailing  under  Dutch  colors  and  owned  by  Dutch  pro- 
prietors, was  really  a  French-built  vessel,  and  France  and 
Spain  were  still  at  war.  The  captain's  arguments  were  not 
convincing,  however,  except  possibly  to  the  owners  of  "La 
Garce."  The  cause  dragged  along  in  the  prize  courts  upon 
one  technicality  and  another  for  a  number  of  years,  and  the 
"  Tabasco  "  was  at  last  decided  not  to  have  been  lawful  prize. 
Long  before  this  happened,  however,  one  of  the  owners,  Sur- 
geon Van  der  Bogaerdt,  had  ceased  to  have  any  interest  in 
"La  Garce"  and  her  prizes.  At  Albany,  in  the  winter  of 
1647-48,  he  was  accused  of  a  criminal  offence  of  grave  nature. 
He  took  refuge  in  the  Mohawk  Country  among  the  Indians, 


DEATH  OF  SURGEON  VAN  DER  BOGAERDT  71 


with  whom  he  had  become  well  acquainted  in  the  course  of 
his  official  business  at  Albany,  and  when  a  party  was  sent  by 
the  magistrates  to  arrest  him  he  made  a  determined  resistance. 
In  the  course  of  the  fray,  the  Indian  cabin,  in  which  he  had 
fortified  himself,  which  seems  to  have  been  a  building  of  some 
size  and  importance,  was  set  on  fire,  either  accidentally  or 
designedly,  and  Harmanus  van  der  Bogaerdt  perished  in  the 
flames.  This  affair  made  a  great  sensation  in  New  Amster- 
dam, where  his  wife  would  seem  to  have  been  living  at  the 
time.  The  Indians  demanded  to  be  reimbursed  for  the  de- 
struction of  their  building,  and  in  Februaiy,  1648,  the 
Director-General  and  Council  ordered  a  part  of  Van  der 
Bogaerdt's  garden,  upon  Stone  Street  in  New  Amsterdam,  to 
be  sold  for  the  purpose  of  indemnifying  the  Indians.  The 
part  sold  seems  to  be  the  easternmost  portion  of  the  exten- 
sive site  of  the  Produce  Exchange. 

Van  der  Bogaerdt's  widow  married  within  a  few  months  after 
his  decease  one  Jean  Labatie,  or  Labbate,  as  the  Dutch  called 
him,  a  person  of  French  extraction,  who  was  at  the  time 
master  carpenter  of  the  West  India  Company  in  New  Amster- 
dam. They  appear  to  have  remained  in  possession  of  the 
surgeon's  house  on  Stone  Street  (which  occupied,  it  would 
seem,  a  portion  of  the  site  of  the  building  No.  11  Stone 
Street,  together  with  a  few  feet  of  that  of  the  Produce  Ex- 
change) till  the  latter  part  of  1652,  when  they  sold  it  to  Isaac 
de  Foreest.  They  had  also  some  claim  to  the  adjoining  gar- 
den, previously  ordered  to  be  sold  by  the  Council,  or  had 
themselves  redeemed  it,  for  in  1654  they  sold  out  their  inter- 
est in  that  parcel  to  one  Paulus  Schrick.  Labatie  afterwards 
removed  to  a  farm  near  Albany,  and  later  became  one  of  the 
first  settlers  at  Schenectady. 

Isaac  de  Foreest  and  his  elder  brother  Hendrick  occupy  a 
prominent  place  in  the  early  history  of  New  Netherland,  as 
having  been  the  pioneers  of  the  settlement  of  Harlem.  They 
were  both  young  men  when  they  came  over  from  Leyden  to 
New  Amsterdam  in  1636,  —  Isaac  only  about  twenty  years  of 
age,  and  his  brother  Hendrick,  though  a  married  man,  not 


72      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


much  older.  From  the  rough,  forest-clad  hills,  seamed  with 
deep  ravines,  a  part  of  which  now  occupy  the  north  end  of 
the  Central  Park,  these  two  brothers,  as  they  explored  the 
island  of  the  Mannhatoes,  soon  after  their  arrival,  must  have 
seen,  as  they  looked  to  the  northward,  toward  the  wide  salt-water 
estuary  which  we  now  know  as  Harlem  River,  a  level  expanse 
of  some  seven  or  eight  hundred  acres  in  area,  broken  only  by 
one  or  two  isolated  rocky  eminences  crowned  with  trees. 
Through  the  midst  of  this  ran  a  small  fresh-water  stream,  and 
there  is  little  doubt  that  portions  of  the  plain  had  been  long 
cleared  and  cultivated  by  the  Indians.  Here  Hendrick  de 
Foreest  selected  a  tract  of  about  two  hundred  acres,  lying 
between  the  heights  and  the  little  stream  flowing  through  the 
flats,  and  here,  not  very  far  from  the  present  Harlem  Lake  in 
the  Central  Park,  he  commenced  the  erection  of  the  first 
house  of  European  settlers  upon  the  north  end  of  Manhattan 
island.  Isaac  de  Foreest  was  probably  an  assistant  of  his 
brother  in  his  early  operations,  but  Hendrick  soon  dying,  his 
widow  married  again,  and  the  bouwery  passed  into  the  hands 
of  strangers.  Isaac  de  Foreest  therefore  sought  to  establish 
a  new  plantation  for  himself,  and  he  secured  about  one  hun- 
dred acres  of  ground,  extending  in  a  long,  narrow  strip  for 
nearly  a  mile  from  about  the  present  Fifth  Avenue  and  One 
Hundred  and  Twelfth  Street  to  the  river  shore  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  First  Avenue  and  One  Hundred  and  Twenty -sixth 
Street.  It  was  near  the  latter  spot  that  in  1641  he  had  a 
dwelling  and  a  large  tobacco-house  built  by  two  English  car- 
penters. He  obtained  a  ground-brief  or  patent  for  this  land 
in  1647.  It  had  probably  been  devastated  by  the  Indians  in 
1643,  as  most  of  the  outlying  plantations  were,  and  whether 
De  Foreest  kept  up  his  buildings  there  we  do  not  know.  In 
1650  he  sold  the  farm  to  Willem  Beeckman ;  it  was  selected 
for  the  site  of  the  village  of  Harlem,  and  Isaac  de  Foreest's 
lane,  or  cart-path,  upon  the  east  side  of  his  farm,  became  the 
main  street  of  the  new  settlement. 

De  Foreest  himself,  for  some  time  before  the  last-mentioned 
date,  had  been  dwelling  upon  the  Winckel  Straet  in  New 


ISAAC  DE  FOREEST,  THE  BREWER  73 


Amsterdam,  where  he  owned  the  house  next  to  that  of  Domi- 
nie Bogardus,  to  which  previous  reference  has  been  made,  in 
these  sketches.  Soon  after  his  purchase  of  Surgeon  Van  der 
Bogaerdt's  house  on  Stone  Street,  he  sold  his  former  dwelling- 
house  upon  the  Winckel  Straet,  and  continued  to  make  the 
Stone  Street  house  his  residence  during  most  of  the  remainder 
of  his  life.  As  early  as  1653,  De  Foreest  was  known  as  a 
successful  brewer  in  New  Amsterdam,  and  two  or  three  years 
later  he  petitioned  the  Council  for  permission  to  contract  for 
all  the  beer  that  one  of  his  rivals  in  business  could  brew,  in 
order  to  save  the  latter  from  pecuniary  embarrassment.  As 
to  his  place  of  business  in  the  earlier  years  we  are  not  in- 
formed, but  as  early  as  1660  his  large  brewery  stood  upon  the 
north  side  of  the  Prinsen  Straet,  now  called  Beaver  Street,  a 
short  distance  west  of  the  modern  William  Street.  De  For- 
eest's  brewing  operations  did  not  prevent  his  being  engaged 
to  some  extent  in  public  business,  and  in  1656  he  was  ap- 
pointed "  Master  of  the  Weigh  House."  This  building,  in- 
tended for  the  weighing,  measuring,  gauging,  etc.,  of  goods 
had  been  ordered  to  be  constructed  in  1653,  and  stood  near 
the  little  dock  upon  Schreyers  Hoek.  It  was  afterwards  re- 
moved to  a  spot  upon  the  south  side  of  Pearl  Street,  at  the 
head  of  another  small  dock  on  the  line  of  the  present  Moore 
Street,  built  about  1659. 

About  the  time  of  the  surrender  of  New  Amsterdam  to  the 
English  in  1664,  Isaac  de  Foreest  incurred  considerable  cen- 
sure from  a  part  of  his  fellow-citizens.  It  seems  that  while 
the  English  vessels  were  lying  in  the  harbor  before  New 
Amsterdam,  with  their  force  as  yet  unknown,  De  Foreest  was 
taken  prisoner,  apparently  by  an  English  detachment  which 
had  landed  upon  Long  Island  and  which  encountered  him  at 
that  place.  He  was  taken  to  the  ships,  but  was  soon  released, 
and  sent  back  to  New  Amsterdam;  there  he  reported  that 
Colonel  Nicoll  had  a  force  of  about  eight  hundred  English 
soldiers  ready  to  make  a  landing.  After  the  surrender,  it  was 
discovered  (according  to  the  representations  made  by  the 
West  India  Company  to  the  States-General)  that  the  English 


74      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


only  had  a  few  more  than  two  hundred  men,  —  a  force  hardly 
equal  in  number  to  the  garrison.  There  was  great  indignation 
among  the  soldiers  of  the  garrison  and  the  more  patriotic 
Dutch  citizens,  and  some  talk  of  repudiating  Stuyvesant's 
articles  of  surrender.  The  Director-General's  long  course  of 
petty  tyranny,  however,  had  so  alienated  the  mass  of  the 
citizens  that  they  seem  to  have  looked  upon  the  arrival  of 
the  English  as  a  positive  relief ;  they  would  do  nothing, 
and  the  others  had  to  swallow  their  indignation  as  best  they 
could. 


CHAPTER  IX 


THE  VAN  CORTLANDT  HOMESTEAD.  —  CATHERINE  VAN 
CORTLANDT  AND  HER  CHURCH  AT  SLEEPY  HOLLOW.— 
VAN  COUWENHOVENS  HOUSES  ON  STONE  STREET  — 
PIETE    HARTGERS,  THE  WAMPUM  COMMISSIONER 

T  TPON  the  north  side  of  Stone  Street  there  stand  two 


unpretending  brick  warehouses  of  the  style  of  half  a 
century  ago.  Between  their  high  blank  walls  is  a  narrow 
lane,  or  passageway,  which  seems  to  lead  to  nowhere  in  par- 
ticular, and  which  is  closed  to  the  street  by  a  curious  port- 
cullis arrangement  of  iron  bars.  The  ground  covered  by 
these  buildings,  Nos.  13  and  15  Stone  Street,  and  by  the 
passageway,  together  with  a  small  additional  strip  upon  the 
west,  forms  a  spot  which  ought  to  be  of  some  interest  to  a 
good  many  of  the  citizens  of  New  York,  for  it  is  the  ances- 
tral site  of  one  of  their  oldest  families,  the  Van  Cortlandts. 

From  the  small  town  of  Wyck  te  Durstadt,  a  few  miles 
southeast  of  Utrecht,  Oloff  Stevensen  van  Cortlandt  came 
over  to  New  Amsterdam  in  1637  as  a  soldier  in  the  service 
of  the  West  India  Company.  Director- General  Kieft,  who 
came  to  the  Colony  in  the  year  succeeding  Van  Cortlandt's 
arrival,  seems  to  have  taken  a  fancy  to  the  young  soldier, 
and  transferred  him  from  the  military  to  the  civil  service, 
giving  him  the  appointment  of  commissary,  or  superin- 
tendent of  cargoes  at  the  port.  The  direct  compensation  of 
this  office  was  not  very  lucrative,  however,  for  in  1641,  his 
salary  was  raised  to  30  guilders,  or  about  $12  per  month;  the 
probabilities  are  that  his  services  in  the  office  to  which  he 
was  thus  appointed  were  only  needed  at  the  comparatively 
infrequent  intervals  of  the  arrival  or  departure  of  a  vessel  in 
port.    At  any  rate,  we  find  him  at  about  this  period  with  a 


76      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


" plantation"  on  his  hands  near  where  the  village  of  Green- 
wich was  subsequently  located,  —  the  present  Ninth  Ward 
of  the  city.  Probably  enough,  this  came  to  him  through  a 
mortgage  from  one  Thomas  Betts,  or  Bescher,  as  he  is  some- 
times called,  who  seems  to  have  occupied  it  for  a  time.  This 
man  is  said  to  have  been  an  Englishman,  and  appears  to  have 
succumbed  about  this  time  to  the  twofold  misfortunes  of  an 
encumbered  farm  and  a  worthless  wife.  In  the  spring  of 
1641,  Van  Cortlandt  leased  the  plantation  to  three  persons 
who  seem  to  have  been  Englishmen,  for  the  rental  of  three 
hundred  pounds  of  tobacco  per  year.  More  than  by  his 
farming  investments,  however,  Van  Cortlandt' s  prospects 
were  improved  by  his  marriage  in  1642  to  Anneken,  sister  of 
Govert  Loockermans,  the  leading  merchant  and  Indian 
trader  of  the  Colony  at  that  time.  Soon  thereafter  he  re- 
ceived from  Director  Kieft  the  somewhat  important  appoint- 
ment of  keeper  of  the  public  store,  and  thenceforwards  his 
advancement  in  wealth  and  influence  was  quite  rapid. 

Van  Cortlandt  was  living  upon  "the  road,"  or  Stone  Street, 
as  early  as  1646,  and  had  obtained  his  deed  or  ground-brief 
for  the  land  in  the  preceding  year.  In  addition  to  his  ap- 
pointments under  the  West  India  Company,  he  was  the 
agent  for  the  ex-Director  Van  Twiller,  who,  upon  his  return 
to  the  Netherlands  in  about  the  year  1638,  had  retained 
quite  extensive  landed  interests  in  the  Colony.  Van  Cort- 
landt also  took  a  prominent  part  in  the  affairs  of  the  church 
at  New  Amsterdam,  of  which  he  was  a  deacon ;  and  mention 
has  already  been  made,  in  a  preceding  chapter  of  this  work, 
how  Director- General  Kieft  induced  him  to  bring  a  suit  for 
slander  against  Dominie  Bogardus,  which  suit,  however,  was 
afterwards  settled  amicably  between  the  parties.  Following 
this  affair  there  seems  to  have  been  some  diminution  of  Van 
Cortlandt's  influence  with  the  officers  of  government  at  New 
Amsterdam;  he  was  certainly  out  of  his  office  of  keeper  of 
the  stores  as  early  as  the  spring  of  1647,  and  in  that  same 
year  he  was  chosen  by  the  popular  party  of  New  Amsterdam 
as  one  of  the  representative  "Nine  Men,"  who  afterwards 


OLOFF  VAN  CORTLANDT 


77 


drew  up  the  historic  "Remonstrance"  to  the  States-General 
against  the  misrule  of  the  West  India  Company  and  its 
officers  in  New  Netherland.  Van  Cortlandt  signed  this  docu- 
ment with  the  remarkable  statement  appended  to  his  signa- 
ture that  it  was  "under  protest."  Just  what  he  meant  by 
this  is  not  entirely  plain,  but  it  appears  to  have  been  a  sort  of 
"hedging"  device.  The  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven,  who 
went  over  to  the  Netherlands  for  the  purpose  of  answering 
the  "  Remonstrance,"  on  behalf  of  the  colonial  authorities,  did 
not  fail  to  vilify,  after  his  usual  fashion,  Van  Cortlandt  for 
his  ambiguous  conduct:  "He  has  profited  by  the  Company's 
service,"  said  the  Secretary,  "and  is  endeavoring  to  give  his 
benefactor  the  pay  of  the  world,  — that  is,  evil  for  good." 

Politics  being  unsatisfactory,  Oloff  van  Cortlandt  now 
appears  to  have  given  his  attention  more  particularly  to 
private  business,  and  in  1648,  according  to  Valentine,  he 
became  a  brewer.  No  reference  to  the  site  of  his  brewery  is 
found  in  the  Dutch  land  records.  Many  years  afterwards, 
when  the  Van  Cortlandts  had  acquired  much  property  in 
the  Marketfield  Lane,  adjoining  the  rear  of  their  original 
grant  upon  Stone  Street,  their  breweries  and  appurtenances 
are  referred  to  as  large  buildings  apparently  occupying  sites 
in  the  interior  of  the  block.  The  lane,  or  passageway,  pre- 
viously spoken  of  may,  indeed,  have  been  the  original  ap- 
proach to  these  structures  from  Stone  Street.  As  to  Van 
Cortlandt's  house,  the  records  seem  to  be  equally  silent. 
Muniments  of  the  family  may  possibly  be  in  existence  which 
could  throw  light  upon  these  points,  but  one  or  two  so-called 
descriptions  of  the  ancient  buildings  which  have  heretofore 
appeared  in  print  would  appear  to  be  entirely  fanciful. 

Here,  then,  Oloff  Stevensen  van  Cortlandt  spent  many  of 
the  closing  years  of  his  life.  If  he  sometimes  remembered 
the  village  of  his  last  abode  in  the  Netherlands  and  the 
waters  of  the  Rhine  flowing  silently  by  it  through  the  old 
Lech  channel  which  Civilis  and  the  Batavians  had  excavated 
more  than  fifteen  centuries  before ;  if  he  called  to  mind  the 
surrounding  lowlands,  yellow  with  the  wheat  harvest;  and 


78      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


the  Amersfoort  Hills  beyond,  —  quite  mountains  to  the 
Netherlander,  —  where  white  fields  of  buckwheat  checkered 
the  purple  of  the  heaths  and  the  green  of  the  woodlands,  — 
he  never  allowed  these  memories  to  call  him  back  to  the  old 
country,  though  he  early  acquired  an  ample  competence  for 
his  day.  He  remained  quietly  in  New  Amsterdam,  holding 
the  office  of  Burgomaster  of  the  city  for  ten  years,  from  1655 
to  1665,  and  when  the  English  made  their  descent  upon  New 
Amsterdam  in  1664,  Director-General  Stuyvesant  appointed 
him  one  of  the  commissioners  to  negotiate  the  surrender  to 
the  English.  After  his  death  in  1683,  members  of  his  family 
long  retained  this  property  or  a  portion  of  it,  but  it  event- 
ually passed  out  of  their  hands.  The  "brick  dwelling-house, 
kitchen,  brew-house,  malt-house,  mill-house,  horse-mill,  out- 
houses, storehouses,  and  stables,"  which  stood  here  in  the 
next  century,  have  all  disappeared,  but  an  edifice  erected  by 
Oloff  van  Cortlandt's  daughter  Catherine,  who  was  a  child 
of  two  or  three  years  of  age  at  the  time  of  our  survey,  in 
1655,  has  been  more  enduring.  The  little  church  of  gray 
stone,  in  the  building  of  which  in  1699  she  took  such  a  lively 
interest,  still  stands,  much  as  of  old,  upon  the  Albany  post- 
road,  near  the  site  of  the  upper  manor-house  of  her  husband 
Frederick  Phillipse,  north  of  Tarrytown.  The  ancient  road, 
somewhat  widened  since  Catherine  van  Cortlandt's  day,  still 
winds  around  the  shady  knoll  upon  which  her  church  stands, 
and  climbs  the  hill  beyond ;  but  the  tenants  of  the  manor,  the 
slaves  of  the  Phillipses,  and  the  straggling  Indian  hunters 
who  frequented  it  in  her  time  have  long  since  vanished  from 
memory.  The  few  slabs  of  brown  stone  scattered  here  and 
there  around  the  church,  when  she  passed  among  them,  — 

"  With  slow  feet,  treading  reverently 
The  graveyard's  springing  grass,"  — 

have  expanded,  in  the  course  of  two  centuries,  to  almost 
a  "city  of  the  dead;"  but  at  the  foot  of  the  knoll,  the 
Pocantico,  enriched  with  legendary  charms  by  the  genius  of 
Washington  Irving,  flows  from  out  its  woody  solitudes,  as 


THE  VAN  CORTLANDT  FAMILY 


79 


it  did  when  the  foundress  of  the  church  looked  down  upon 
it,  —  of  whom,  turning  to  the  list  of  members  in  the  records 
of  this  ancient  Dutch  church,  we  read :  — 

"  First  and  before  all,  the  right  honorable,  God-fearing,  very  wise  and 
prudent  my  lady  Catharine  Phillipse,  widow  of  the  lord  Frederick  Phil- 
lipse  of  blessed  memory,  who  has  promoted  service  here  in  the  highest 
praiseworthy  manner." 

Oloff  van  Cortlandt's  descendants  were  extensive  land- 
holders, and,  either  directly  or  by  marriage,  they  controlled 
at  one  time  all  the  land  along  the  east  side  of  the  Hudson 
River,  from  the  highlands  above  the  modern  Peekskill  to 
the  Spuyten  Duyvil  Creek,  a  distance  of  about  thirty  miles, 
and  extending  several  miles  back  into  the  country.  Their 
name  is  perpetuated  in  that  of  the  town  of  Cortlandt  in 
Westchester  County,  and  in  Courtlandt  Street  and  the  Van 
Cortlandt  Park  in  the  City  of  New  York. 

The  interval  upon  the  north  side  of  Stone  Street  between 
the  Van  Cortlandt  house  and  the  present  Broad  Street  is  now 
occupied  by  buildings  fronting  upon  the  latter  street,  but  it 
was  not  so  occupied  originally.  In  the  spring  of  1645,  Peter 
Wolphertsen  van  Couwenhoven,  one  of  several  members  of 
a  family  who  came  from  Amersfoort,  only  a  few  miles  away 
from  Oloff  van  Cortlandt's  last  dwelling-place  in  the  Nether- 
lands, obtained  a  grant  from  Director  Kieft  of  a  plot  of 
ground,  nearly  fifty  by  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  feet  in 
area,  at  the  corner  of  Stone  Street  and  the  present  Broad 
Street,  the  latter  being  at  this  point,  and  at  the  time  men- 
tioned, a  mere  narrow  road  or  lane  about  twenty-five  or  thirty 
feet  in  width,  and  with  an  artificial  ditch  or  channel  skirting 
its  east  side.  Here  Van  Couwenhoven  built  near  the  corner 
of  the  streets  a  modest  house  —  one  story  and  a  garret  only 
—  which  in  the  next  year,  1646,  he  sold  to  Arnoldus  van 
Hardenbergh.  He  then  immediately  acquired  from  the 
Director-General  the  grant  of  another  parcel  of  about  the 
same  size,  lying  between  the  first  and  Van  Cortlandt's  gar- 
den, and  proceeded  to  build  another  house  here.  This  he 
held  for  several  years,  until  1652,  when  he  sold  it  to  Pieter 


80      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Hartgers,  who  was  the  owner  at  the  period  of  our  survey. 
Hartgers,  who  had  married  one  of  the  step-daughters  of 
Dominie  Bogardus,  was  engaged  much  of  his  time  in  trading 
with  the  Indians,  and  occupied  this  house  very  irregularly. 
Finally,  he  appears  to  have  taken  up  his  residence  in  Fort 
Orange,  or  Albany,  where  he  received  grants  of  land,  and 
where  he  was  one  of  the  magistrates  in  1658.  He  acquired 
the  reputation  of  a  great  expert  as  to  the  values  of  the 
Indian  wampum,  or  shell  money,  and  was  appointed  in  1659 
a  commissioner  at  Albany  to  estimate  the  same.  His  inti- 
mate acquaintance  with  the  Indians  led  him  to  make  long 
expeditions  into  the  forests  to  drum  up  trade  with  them,  a 
course  of  business  which  excited  great  jealousy  among  his 
less  enterprising  rivals.  He  retained  the  Stone  Street  house, 
hut  whether  as  a  storehouse  in  his  business,  or  in  the  occu- 
pation of  tenants  is  not  known.  At  the  time  of  the  sur- 
render to  the  English  in  1661,  Hartgers  became  obnoxious 
to  the  new  government  from  some  cause  or  other,  —  possibly 
from  a  refusal  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance,  —  and  his  prop- 
erty was  confiscated.  A  curious  circumstance,  showing  the 
scarcity  of  money  in  the  Colony,  is  that  so  late  as  1659  this 
house  was  the  subject  of  a  mortgage  to  secure  "  three  hun- 
dred and  thirteen  whole  beaver-skins." 

As  for  the  corner  plot  mentioned  above,  after  its  sale  in 
1646  to  Arnoldus  van  Hardenbergh  for  1600  guilders,  or 
about  $640  of  the  present  currency,  it  appears  to  have  be- 
come encumbered  with  debts  of  its  owner  to  one  Hendrick 
Scharf,  of  Amsterdam,  and  an  arrangement  was  effected  in 
the  year  1652  by  which  the  house  and  garden  was  turned 
over  to  the  brother  of  Arnoldus,  Johannes  Hardenbergh, 
who  was  at  that  time  a  merchant  of  Amsterdam.  He  was 
the  owner  of  this  property  at  the  time  of  our  survey,  but  it 
is  not  certain  whether  he  ever  actually  resided  here.  He 
died  before  the  year  1659,  in  which  year  the  place  was  sold 
by  the  curators  of  his  estate,  and  soon  after  this  date  the 
garden  was  sold  off  in  small  lots  fronting  upon  the  Graft, 
or  Broad  Street. 


^  i%w  of  Brouwer  Straet  and 
Hoogh  Struct  in  New 
Amsterdam 

from  Fort  Amsterdam  to  the  Stadt  Huys 
A.D.  1655 

Compiled  from  the  Dutch  and 
English  Records  by 

J.  H.  INNES 


NOTE— Conjectural  sites,  or  those  which  have  not  been 
the  subjects  of  full  examination,  appear  in  dotted  lines. 


R  efe rences: 

Site  of  original  house  of  Adam  Roelantsen. 

"  House  of  the  Fiscal." 

Brewery  of  the  West  India  Company. 

Site  of  fan  Couwen/iot/en's  Brewery,  1658. 

Site  of  later  Melyn  House. 


CHAPTER  X 


THE    "DITCH,"    OR    GRAFT.  —  TEUN1S    CRAIE    AND  HIS 
HOUSES  ON  THE  DITCH.  — THE  JEWS  IN  NEW  AMSTER- 
DAM.— SOLOMON  LA    CHAIR,    THE    NOTARY,  AND  HIS 
TAVERN— THE  BANISHMENT  OF  MICH IE L  PICQUET 

Ein  Jahrtausend  sclion  und  lauger 
Dulden  wir  uns  briiderlich ; 
Du,  du  duldest,  dass  ich  atrae, 
Dass  du  rasest,  dulde  ich. 

Jetzt  wird  unsre  Freundschaft  fester, 
Und  noch  t'aglich  nimmt  sie  zu ; 
Denn  ich  selbst  begann  zu  rasen 
Und  ich  werde  fast  wie  du ! 

Heine:  "An  Edom." 

IT  required  some  education  in  the  ways  of  the  Nether- 
landers  to  render  the  Graft,  or  the  modern  Broad  Street, 
at  which  we  have  now  arrived,  a  very  desirable  place  of  resi- 
dence in  the  year  1655.  The  bog  or  morass  towards  the 
head  of  the  present  street  was  known  as  Blommaert's,  and 
afterwards  as  the  Company's  Vly,  in  the  earlier  days  of 
the  settlement,  and  had  long  been  an  eyesore  to  the  officers 
of  the  Company.  As  early  as  1638  it  appears  that  measures 
to  drain  it  were  in  contemplation ;  and  when  Director  Kief t 
leased  the  land  north  of  the  present  Beaver  Street  to  Jan 
Damen,  in  the  spring  of  that  year,  the  curious  reservation 
was  made  that  "  in  case  the  Company  think  proper  to  plant 
vineyards  or  gardens  in  the  Vly,  the  lessee  shall  permit  the 
same."  The  natural  outlet  of  this  swamp  was  a  small  fresh- 
water run  which  emptied  into  the  East  River  near  the  inter- 
section of  Broad  with  the  present  Pearl  Street,  just  south  of 
which  last-named  street  was  the  original  shore  line.  Before 

6 


82      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


1643,  an  artificial  channel  or  ditch  had  been  constructed  to 
carry  off  the  waters  of  the  swamp:  this  was  only  a  few  feet 
in  width,  and  was  carried  along  the  middle  of  the  present 
Broad  Street ;  upon  its  west  side  there  was  left  a  roadway  of 
twenty-five  or  thirty  feet  in  width  extending  from  the  shore 
to  the  present  Beaver  Street,  but  upon  its  east  side  no  such 
roadway  appears  to  have  been  originally  in  contemplation, 
for  the  first  grants  of  land  here  came  in  several  instances 
quite  to  the  ditch  and  consequently  infringed  upon  the 
eastern  half  of  the  present  Broad  Street.  This  was  the  con- 
dition of  the  Graft  at  the  period  of  our  survey,  but  a  little 
later,  larger  views  prevailed  with  the  Director  and  Council, 
and  in  1657-59,  arrangements  were  made  with  the  land- 
holders on  the  east  side  of  the  Graft;  a  strip  corresponding 
in  size  with  that  upon  the  west  of  the  ditch  was  added  to  the 
street,  thus  bringing  it  to  its  present  width,  and  the  ditch 
was  widened  and  deepened  so  as  to  form  a  canal  extending 
nearly  to  Beaver  Street,  through  which  canal  the  tide  ebbed 
and  flowed.  To  protect  the  sides  of  this  canal,  it  became 
necessary  to  sheathe  it  with  planks,  and  this  was  done  by  the 
public  authorities  at  considerable  expense,  and  to  the  great 
dissatisfaction  of  the  property  owners  along  it,  who  made 
such  determined  opposition  to  the  collection  of  the  assess- 
ments laid  upon  them,  that  the  West  India  Company  was 
fain  to  contribute  nearly  half  of  the  cost  of  the  work  in  order 
to  prevent  public  disturbances. 

Low-lying  and  damp  as  the  "  Ditch  Street "  must  have  been 
before  the  construction  of  the  canal  in  1657,  it  doubtless 
possessed  attractions  for  Teunis  Craie,  who  obtained  from 
the  Director  and  Council,  in  April,  1647,  a  ground-brief  for 
a  parcel  of  land  at  the  southwesterly  corner  of  the  present 
Stone  and  Broad  streets,  being  in  area  about  thirty-seven 
feet  front  on  the  former  street  and  fifty-five  feet  on  the 
latter. 

Craie,  who  had  come  from  Venlo,  a  small  border  town 
upon  the  Meuse  River  in  Upper  Gelderland,  must  have  been 
among  the  earlier  emigrants,  for  he  had  established  himself 


TEUNIS  CRAIE 


83 


in  New  Amsterdam  as  early  as  1639,  in  which  year,  follow- 
ing the  curious  custom  of  the  colonists  and  of  the  West 
India  Company,  he  had  hired,  or  rather  leased  for  six  years, 
as  the  legal  instrument  expresses  it,  two  milch  cows,  im- 
ported from  the  Netherlands  by  the  Company.  The  rent 
under  this  singular  contract  was  to  be  fifty  pounds  of  butter 
annually,  and  the  risk  of  death  of  the  cattle,  and  the  ultimate 
increase  of  the  same,  were  to  be  shared  in  common  by  Craie 
and  the  Company.  In  all  probability  he  was  at  this  time 
located  upon  some  clearing  outside  of  the  village,1  for  in  the 
winter  of  1642-43,  just  before  the  Indian  war  broke  out,  we 
find  him  making  a  contract  with  one  Walter  Davel  to  put 
a  post-and-five-rail  fence  around  his  plantation.  Like  most 
of  the  farmers  of  Manhattan  Island  at  that  period,  however, 
his  plantation  seems  to  have  suffered  devastation  at  the 
hands  of  the  Indians  in  the  war  which  followed  Kieft's  cruel 
and  foolhardy  outrages  upon  the  latter  in  the  early  part  of 
1643.  Driven  to  the  village  for  security,  we  find  Craie 
looking  about  for  an  abode  there  in  the  following  summer. 
It  was  no  time  for  building  operations,  but  he  found  a  small 
house  which  seems  to  have  been  in  a  somewhat  dilapidated 
condition,  and  which  stood  upon  the  road  along  "The  Ditch," 
at  the  northwest  corner  of  the  present  Bridge  and  Broad 
streets.  It  was  in  all  probability  the  first  house  built  along 
the  line  of  the  latter  street,  and  had  been  originally  acquired 
by  Abraham  Ryken  (the  ancestor  of  the  Rikers  of  later  days), 
in  company  with  one  Jan  Pietersen  from  Amsterdam.  These 
persons  had  sold  the  house  in  the  spring  of  1643  to  Michiel 
Picquet,  a  Frenchman  from  the  ancient  city  of  Rouen  in 
Normandy.  Picquet,  who  had  a  plantation  on  Long  Island, 
did  not  purpose  to  occupy  this  small  house  himself,  and  in 
August,  1643,  Teunis  Craie,  searching  for  a  habitation  at 

1  This  clearing  appears  to  have  occupied  a  portion  of  the  tract  lying  along  the 
East  River,  hetween  the  so-called  "  Great  Bouwery  "  of  the  West  India  Company 
(afterwards  granted  to  Director-General  Stuyvesant)  and  Deutel  or  "  Turtle  " 
Bay  ;  —  or  speaking  in  a  general  way,  between  the  modern  Twenty-first  and 
Forty-fifth  streets.  This  tract  passed  through  many  vicissitudes  in  the  earlier 
years  of  the  Colony. 


84       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


the  village,  was  able  to  hire  the  house  of  its  owner  at  the 
yearly  rental  of  40  guilders,  or  about  $16;  the  rent  was 
certainly  not  exorbitant,  but  as  its  owner  had  only  paid  150 
guilders,  or  about  $60,  for  the  premises,  it  gave  him  fair 
returns  for  his  investment.  In  addition  Craie  agreed  "to 
plaster  and  make  the  house  tight  once,"  and  to  enclose  a 
yard  in  the  rear  "to  lay  wood  in."  Even  this  humble  little 
cottage  near  the  fort  was  looked  upon  in  the  troubled  condi- 
tion of  the  times  as  a  place  of  refuge.  The  owner  stipulates 
in  his  lease  to  Craie  that  "if  in  consequence  of  enemies, 
Indians,  or  other  inconveniences,  necessity  require  Michael 
Picquet  to  lodge  in  said  house  with  his  family  and  baggage, 
he  may  do  so  without  deduction  of  rent.1' 

Here,  then,  Teunis  Craie  apparently  resided  until  he 
acquired  the  adjoining  lot  to  the  north,  already  spoken  of, 
and  built  a  house  for  himself  in  or  about  the  year  1647.  His 
house,  which  stood  upon  the  corner  of  Stone  Street,  faced 
"The  Ditch,"  or  Broad  Street  with  its  gabled  front,  and  the 
capacious  Dutch  oven  in  its  rear  about  filled  up  the  short  lot. 
Just  south  of  the  latter  appendage,  and  likewise  upon  the 
rear  of  his  lot,  stood  his  well,  —  a  famous  one  in  the  neigh- 
borhood. To  it,  and  along  the  south  side  of  his  house, 
extended  a  path,  which  subsequently,  when  in  the  course  of 
a  few  years  he  had  built  another  house  upon  the  south- 
ern portion  of  his  ground,  and  also  fronting  Broad  Street, 
became  a  gated  alleyway  between  the  two  houses,  in  which 
the  formidable  "  drip  "  of  the  steep  Dutch  roofs  produced  a 
miniature  cascade  whenever  a  hard  rain  fell. 

The  small  house  of  Teunis  Craie  upon  "  The  Ditch  "  pos- 
sesses some  interest  as  having  been  the  spot  upon  which  the 
Jews  first  attempted  to  establish  themselves  in  the  rising 
village  of  New  Amsterdam.  The  Portuguese  Jews  —  so- 
called  —  had  for  a  considerable  period  been  numerous  and 
influential  in  Amsterdam,  where  about  twenty  years  after 
the  period  of  our  survey  (or  in  1674),  they  built  the  great 
synagogue,  massive  and  imposing  in  its  simplicity,  and 
standing  upon  a  commodious  square,  bounded  on  two  sides 


THE  JEWS  IN  NEW  AMSTERDAM 


85 


by  broad  canals,  the  Muyder  Graft  and  the  Nieuwe  Heere 
Graft,  —  one  of  the  choicest  locations  in  the  city,  from  which 
it  overlooked,  across  the  latter  canal,  the  greenhouses  and  trim 
alder  hedges  and  beds  of  rare  plants  of  the  Hortus  Medic  us, 
the  celebrated  Botanical  Garden  of  Amsterdam.  This  divi- 
sion of  the  Jews  of  Amsterdam  known  as  the  Portuguese, 
embraced,  however,  many  of  other  nationalities,  particularly 
French  and  Italians.  They  formed  the  aristocracy  of  the 
sect,  and  were  moreover  divided  by  differences  of  dogma 
from  their  much  humbler  brethren,  whose  modest  place  of 
worship  stood  at  no  great  distance  from  them  across  the 
Muyder  Graft,  and  bore  the  formidable  appellation  of  the 
Hoogduytsse  Joode  Kerk,  signifying,  however,  nothing  more 
than  the  High  Dutch  Jewish  Church,  whose  congregation,  in 
addition  to  the  High  Dutch,  or  Germans,  embraced  also  the 
Polish  and  Silesian  Jews ;  they  had  few  affiliations  with  the 
Portuguese. 

In  so  far  as  the  Jews  were  merchants  and  capitalists,  their 
presence  was  by  no  means  unwelcome  in  the  metropolis  and 
larger  cities  of  the  Netherlands,  where  every  nerve  was 
strained  to  extend  the  commercial  influence  of  the  country ; 
but  in  the  colonies,  largely  composed  of  the  poorer  classes  of 
emigrants,  and  where  the  competition  of  the  Jewish  traders 
was  dreaded  by  the  small  shopkeepers,  they  were  looked 
upon  with  much  less  favor;  consequently,  in  November, 
1655,  when  Asher  Levy,  a  butcher  by  trade,  who  afterwards 
became  a  citizen  of  prominence,  and  who  was  one  of  the 
pioneers  of  the  Jews  in  New  Amsterdam,  petitioned  the 
Council  that  he  might  be  permitted  to  mount  guard  with 
the  other  burghers  (during  the  Indian  troubles  of  that  year), 
in  place  of  paying  a  commutation  tax  levied  upon  him  as  a 
stranger,  the  privilege  was  not  only  refused  by  Stuyvesant 
and  his  Council,  but  the  insulting  comment  was  minuted 
upon  his  petition,  that  "if  the  petitioner  consider  himself 
aggrieved,  he  may  go  elsewhere."1 

1  The  first  Jews  to  arrive  in  New  Amsterdam  came  in  the  French  bark 
"St.  Charles,"  in  the  summer  of  1654.    They  were  brought  by  Jacques  de  la 


86      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


It  was  about  this  time  that  Craie,  possibly  disturbed  by  the 
then  threatening  condition  of  affairs  in  the  Colony,  offered 
at  public  auction  the  southernmost  of  his  houses  on  "The 
Ditch,"  or  the  present  Broad  Street.  It  was  struck  down 
to  one  Salvador  d'Andradi,  whose  name  indicates  that  he 
was  one  of  the  Portuguese  Jews;  the  purchaser  immediately 
made  an  application  to  the  Council  with  the  request  that  he 
might  be  permitted  to  take  and  register  his  deed  for  the 
house ;  permission,  however,  was  refused  by  that  body.1  Craie 
now  petitioned  the  Council  to  take,  by  virtue  of  its  right  of 
pre-emption,  the  property  off  his  hands  at  the  figure  bid  for 
it  at  public  sale,  or  otherwise  to  allow  him  to  give  his  deed 
to  the  Jewish  purchaser,  but  this  was  likewise  refused  by 
the  Council.  Craie  was  persistent  in  the  matter,  and  on  the 
14th  of  March,  1656,  having  a  few  days  before  sold  the 
house  to  Pieter  Schabanck  and  Gysbert  van  Imbroeck,  he 
again  applied  to  the  Council,  alleging  that  he  was  then 
about  to  sail  for  the  Fatherland,  that  he  had  been  obliged 
to  dispose  of  his  house  for  a  less  sum  than  D'Andradi  had 
offered  at  the  auction  sale  a  few  months  before,  and  request- 

Motte,  the  master  of  the  vessel,  from  the  harbor  of  Bahia  in  Brazil.  They 
numbered,  according  to  a  statement  made  by  one  of  them,  Solomon  Pieters, 
"  twenty-three  souls,  big  and  little,"  but  as  to  what  brought  this  colony  from  the 
Brazils  we  have  no  information.  A  considerable  sum  remained  due  to  the 
master  of  the  "  St.  Charles  "  for  their  board  and  passage,  and  as  the  principal 
men  among  them  had  signed  an  agreement  whereby  they  became  jointly  and 
severally  liable  for  the  whole  amount,  very  rigorous  proceedings  were  taken 
against  them.  An  auction  sale  was  held  of  their  goods,  and  the  proceeds  being 
insufficient  to  discharge  the  indebtedness,  two  of  them,  David  Israel  and  Moses 
Ambrosius,  were  ordered  to  be  taken  into  confinement  and  held  until  the  amount 
was  made  up.  Among  the  sufferers  was  Asser  "  Leeven  "  or  Levy,  spoken  of 
in  the  text ;  all  of  his  goods  were  sold  at  auction,  although  before  the  sale  he 
had  offered  to  pay  all  charges  incurred  by  himself.  The  New  Amsterdam 
Court  held  him,  however,  to  be  a  surety  for  the  debt  of  all  the  others. 

i  Salvador  d'Andradi  was  one  of  several  Jewish  partners  who  brought  over 
a  consignment  of  goods  in  the  ship  "  Great  Christopher,"  in  the  early  part  of 
1655.  The  other  partners  were  Abraham  de  Lucina,  David  Frera,  Joseph 
Dacosta,  and  one  other,  whose  name  has  not  yet  entirely  died  out  in  New  York, 
—  Jacob  "  Cawyn,"  or  Cohn.  They  arrived  just  in  time  to  be  roundly  taxed 
for  the  new  city  fortifications  along  Wall  Street,  although,  as  we  have  seen,  they 
were  not  allowed  to  become  landholders. 


LA  CHAIR,  THE  NOTARY 


87 


ing  the  Council  to  reimburse  him  one  half  of  the  difference 
in  price;  his  request  again  fell  upon  unsympathetic  ears. 
Craie  does  not  appear  to  have  departed  for  the  Netherlands 
at  this  time;  but  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  his 
representations  of  this  affair  reached  the  Directors  of  the 
West  India  Company  at  Amsterdam,  who  promptly  repudi- 
ated the  action  of  Stuyvesant  and  the  Council,  and  on  the 
14th  of  June,  1656,  an  order  was  made  permitting  the  Jews 
to  establish  a  "quarter"  in  New  Amsterdam:  their  numbers, 
however,  remained  but  small  for  many  years.1 

As  for  Teunis  Craie's  first-built  house  upon  the  corner  of 
Stone  Street,  he  sold  it  about  this  time  to  an  individual  who 
gave  him  far  more  trouble  than  his  Jewish  purchaser  of  the 
adjoining  premises,  and  that  was  to  an  impecunious  gentle- 
man of  the  legal  profession,  Solomon  Pietersen  La  Chair  by 
name,  who  seems  to  have  carried  on  his  law  office  here  in 
conjunction  with  a  small  tavern,  or  ale-house,  to  which  his 
huysvrouw,  Anneken,  attended  during  his  absence  on  the 
multifarious  duties  of  his  profession  in  the  Colony,  —  duties 
which  carried  him  sometimes  to  Breuckelen,  sometimes  to 
Gravesend  and  occasionally  as  far  as  Fort  Orange,  or  Albany. 
For  travelling  facilities  he  seems  to  have  made  use  of  a  small 
yacht. 

La  Chair,  of  whom  many  curious  particulars  were  brought 
to  light  by  the  discovery  in  the  New  York  County  Clerk's 
Office,  some  thirty  or  forty  years  ago,  of  his  register  of  busi- 
ness as  a  notary,  and  who  seems  to  be  regarded  by  Mr.  D.  T. 
Valentine  as  the  Father  of  the  Bar  of  New  York,  —  using  of 
course  that  term  in  its  technical  and  not  in  its  vulgar  sense, 
— ■  was  undoubtedly  a  man  of  considerable  attainments,  pro- 
fessional and  otherwise,  and  possessed  a  very  fair  business 
knowledge  of  English.  His  first  appearance  in  New  Am- 
sterdam, so  far  as  we  are  informed,  was  in  the  year  1655, 
when  he  petitioned  the  Burgomasters  for  permission  to  keep 
tavern  in  the  house  of  Teunis  Craie,  then  hired  by  him. 

1  Their  synagogue  in  Mill  Street  was  not  established  till  more  than  forty 
years  after  the  order  of  Council  above  mentioned. 


88      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


It  seems  very  probable  that  he  had  just  arrived  in  New 
Amsterdam  at  this  time,  and  resorted  to  tavern-keeping  until 
he  might  be  better  able  to  gain  a  footing  in  the  practice  of 
the  more  learned  profession. 

The  location  he  had  chosen  was  not  an  unfavorable  one ; 
as  he  sat  at  the  front  of  his  house  in  the  intervals  of  busi- 
ness, possibly  poring  over  one  of  his  commentaries  on  the 
Roman -Dutch  law,  —  in  which  quotations  from  the  Mosaic 
code,  from  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics,  and  from  the 
Fathers  of  the  Church,  were  freely  intermingled,  in  a  manner 
equally  ponderous  and  bewildering,  —  he  had  before  him  just 
at  his  right  hand  the  bridge  across  the  Ditch,  or  "  Graft "  in 
Broad  Street,  which  was  about  midway  between  the  present 
Bridge  and  Stone  streets,  and  over  which  all  persons  from 
the  Long  Island  ferry,  as  well  as  from  the  eastern  part  of 
town,  must  pass  on  their  way  to  the  Secretary's  office  and  to 
the  other  government  offices  near  the  fort ;  while  beyond  the 
bridge,  looking  over  the  gardens  of  three  or  four  houses 
along  the  shore,  he  had  a  clear  view  of  anything  that  was 
going  on  around  the  City  Tavern,  which  served  also  at  this 
time  as  the  Town  Hall  for  public  gatherings  and  the  meet- 
ings of  the  burgomasters,  and  was  also  the  seat  of  the 
ordinary  courts. 

But,  as  has  been  already  suggested,  La  Chair  was  chroni- 
cally impecunious:  he  did  not  pay  his  rent,  and  was  sued 
for  it;  he  did  not  pay  the  wages  of  the  pilot  of  his  yacht, 
and  was  sued  for  them ;  he  did  not  pay  for  various  articles 
purchased  by  him,  and  was  sued  for  the  price  by  the  sellers ; 
he  did  not  pay  until  driven  to  the  last  ditch  of  resistance 
certain  fines  and  taxes  imposed  upon  him,  and  then  he  ac- 
companied the  payment  with  such  disparaging  remarks  upon 
the  collecting  officers  —  in  one  case  asserting  that  his  money 
was  paid  to  no  other  purpose  than  "  to  have  a  little  cock 
booted  and  spurred "  —  that  those  aggrieved  individuals 
found  it  necessary  to  lay  the  matter  before  the  Council  in 
order  to  soothe  their  wounded  feelings;  much  after  the 
manner  of  their  prototype,  Dogberry: 


TEUNIS  CRAIE'S  MISFORTUNES 


89 


"Moreover,  sir  (which,  indeed,  is  not  under  white  and  black), 
this  plaintiff  here,  the  offender,  did  call  me  ass.  I  beseech  you, 
let  it  be  remembered  in  his  punishment." 

In  the  same  way,  when  in  the  early  part  of  1656  La  Chair 
purchased  the  house  he  occupied  of  Teunis  Craie,  agreeing 
to  pay  for  it  in  instalments,  the  sum  of  2000  guilders,  or 
about  $800,  —  following  his  usual  custom,  he  allowed  him- 
self to  be  sued  for  the  very  first  instalment.  This  seems  to 
have  been  settled  at  the  time,  but  two  years  later  the  owner 
was  obliged  to  bring  suit  for  the  last  instalment,  in  answer  to 
which  La  Chair  entered  the  airy  plea  "  that  the  money  was 
ready  at  one  time,  but  has  slipped  through  his  fingers;"  it 
appears,  in  fact,  to  have  slipped  through  irrecoverably,  for 
we  soon  afterwards  find  Craie  again  in  possession  of  his 
house,  which  in  1660  he  disposed  of  to  Oloff  Stevensen  van 
Cortlandt,  La  Chair  in  the  mean  time  having  removed  to 
another  part  of  the  town,  where  he  died  a  few  years  later, 
so  insolvent  that  the  court  pondered  a  long  time  as  to  whether 
a  certain  elaborate  "gown  and  petticoat"  of  Anneken,  his 
widow,  should  be  sold  for  the  benefit  of  his  creditors,  or 
whether  they  should  be  left  to  cheer  the  widow's  heart  in 
her  second  nuptials  with  one  William  Doeckles. 

It  seems  to  have  been  the  case  that  Teunis  Craie 's  opera- 
tions in  real  estate  in  New  Amsterdam  had  not  been  very 
profitable  to  him,  and  he  suffered  a  further  misfortune  in  the 
fact  that  a  woodland  tract  of  some  sixty  or  seventy  acres, 
which  he  had  acquired  in  1653  upon  Long  Island  (fronting 
the  East  River,  a  short  distance  north  of  the  present  Astoria), 
was  rendered  comparatively  worthless  to  him  for  many  years 
by  the  order  of  the  Council,  in  1656,  forbidding  isolated 
farms  or  plantations,  in  order  to  prevent  depredations  by  the 
Indians.  In  1673  he  had  obtained  a  judgment  of  186  florins, 
or  about  $72,  against  Allard  Anthony,  the  former  sheriff,  a 
man  of  considerable  political  influence;  this  judgment  he 
had  been  unable  to  collect  for  nearly  a  year,  and  in  1674  he 
applied  to  the  court  for  permission  to  levy  on  the  goods  of 


90      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


the  late  sheriff,  "earnestly  entreating  this  Worshipful  Court 
once  again  to  take  his  most  pitiable  condition  into  considera- 
tion and  to  give  order  that  the  said  Judgment  may  be  put 
into  execution  without  further  delay,  to  the  end  that  he  may 
again  receive  his  disbursed  money  to  use  it  in  nis  old  age." 

Craie  had  retained  a  mere  slip  of  ground  upon  the  south 
side  of  his  original  grant,  and  here  he  built  one  of  the  tiniest 
dwelling-houses  ever  erected  in  New  York;1  the  lot  upon 
which  it  stood  was  less  than  ten  feet  front  by  about  forty  feet 
deep ;  it  occupied  very  nearly  the  site  of  the  covered  drive- 
way of  the  building  No.  9'2  Broad  Street,  within  which  it 
might  almost  have  stood,  among  the  bales  of  hay  and  bags 
of  feed  now  occupying  that  locality.  Here  Teunis  Craie 
appears  to  have  resided  for  a  number  of  years,  partly  sup- 
ported by  the  not  very  lucrative  official  employments  which 
Mr.  Valentine  enumerates  as  having  been  held  by  him,  such 
as  town  crier,  measurer  of  apples  and  onions  brought  to 
market,  and  tally-master  of  the  bricks  and  tiles  imported 
from  Holland.  In  1677,  his  widow  Catrina  conveyed  the 
small  house  above  mentioned  to  the  deacons  of  the  Reformed 
Church,  in  consideration  of  her  support  and  maintenance, 
she  being  then  poor  and  aged.  She  had  died  prior  to  1682, 
in  which  year  the  officers  of  the  church  disposed  of  the 
property. 

However  much  Teunis  Craie  might  have  felt 

"  The  slings  and  arrows  of  outrageous  fortune," 

he  was  lucky  in  comparison  with  his  neighbor  and  former 
landlord,  Michiel  Picquet,  whose  humble  house  stood  at  the 
northwest  corner  of  the  present  Bridge  and  Broad  streets,  as 
previously  described.  This  man  had  endeavored,  in  his  lease 
to  Craie,  as  we  have  already  seen,  to  guard  himself  against 
14 enemies,  Indians,  or  other  inconveniences,"'  —  but  he  failed 

1  A  smaller  one  is,  however,  to  be  seen  at  present  (1900)  in  Stone  Street, 
upon  the  rear  of  the  old  Stadt  Huys  ground.  This  diminutive  structure,  known 
as  No.  32^  Stone  Street,  has  only  about  seven  feet  front. 


PICQUET  PUT  TO  THE  TORTURE  91 


to  provide  against  one  of  the  worst  inconveniences  of  all,  — 
namely,  that  of  an  unbridled  tongue.  He  appears,  in  fact, 
to  have  been  something  of  what  the  good  Dame  Quickly, 
of  Eastcheap,  held  in  such  abhorrence,  — namely,  a  "swag- 
gerer." In  common  with  most  of  the  citizens  who  had 
suffered  from  the  Indian  wars,  he  entertained  a  bitter  hatred 
of  Director  Kieft,  and  he  appears  to  have  been  a  warm 
partisan  of  his  neighbor,  just  over  " the  Ditch"  in  Broad 
Street,  —  Cornells  Melyn,  the  leader  of  the  opposition  to  the 
arbitrary  despotism  of  Kieft  and  of  Stuyvesant.  Soon  after 
Stuyvesant's  arrival  at  New  Amsterdam,  in  the  early  part  of 
the  summer  of  1647,  and  before  Kieft  had  sailed  for  the 
Netherlands  on  the  fatal  voyage  of  the  "Princess,"  Picquet 
was  accused  of  having  berated  Kieft  as  "a  betrayer  of  his 
country,  a  villain  and  traitor;  and  saying  if  nobody  would 
shoot  him,  he  (said  Picquet)  would  do  it  himself;  that  his 
legs  should  never  carry  him  out  of  the  country;  that  Cornells 
Melyn  had  full  a  hundred  men  at  his  command,  and  there 
would  be  great  bloodshed  on  the  spot  where  the  ex-Director 
surrendered  his  authority  to  General  Stuyvesant;  and  if  the 
latter  did  not  behave  himself  better  than  the  old  Director, 
he,  too,  should  pass  under  the  door:  (striking  under  his 
arm),"  —  a  somewhat  vulgar  allusion  to  the  standard  method 
of  punishment  of  refractory  small  boys. 

Although  this  style  of  talk  was  probably  a  fair  sample  of 
the  ordinary  ale-house  discussions  of  the  period,  and  although 
it  was  generally  winked  at  by  the  authorities  in  the  case  of 
any  person  likely  to  have  influence  enough  to  carry  his  com- 
plaints to  the  home  country,  it  was  not  to  be  endured  in  the 
case  of  this  obscure  Frenchman.  Picquet  was  taken  into 
custody  "for  that  scandalous  and  godless  act,"  and  was,  in 
fact,  ordered  to  be  put  to  the  torture,  —  probably  for  the 
purpose  of  extracting  information  respecting  the  matters 
hinted  at  in  his  vaporings.  It  should  not  be  forgotten,  in 
this  connection,  that  the  history  of  New  York  goes  back  to 
the  time  when  the  rack  was  an  acknowledged  feature  of 
judicial  procedure. 


92       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Some  kind  of  settlement  was  made  of  this  affair,  and 
Picquet  received  Director-General  Stuyvesant's  pardon,  but 
his  rancor  had  apparently  not  abated,  and  he  had  profited 
but  little  by  his  former  experience,  for  in  a  short  time  he  was 
again  placed  under  arrest,  charged  with  saying  that  he  would 
shoot  the  Director  between  his  bouwery  (at  the  present 
Ninth  Street)  and  the  fort.  The  ignorant  and  probably  weak- 
minded  character  of  this  man  is  pretty  well  shown  by  the 
record  of  his  examination  taken  upon  this  occasion.  When 
asked  what  he  had  to  say,  he  declared  that  the  witnesses 
against  him  were  unworthy  of  belief  because  they  "had 
stolen  watermelons  and  some  boards.  Asked  if  he  could 
prove  it,  says  he  has  no  proof,  but  that  God  was  his  wit- 
ness." The  trial  of  this  case  was  attended  with  one  public 
benefit ;  it  displayed  at  a  very  early  date  in  his  administration 
the  thoroughly  hypocritical  character  of  the  new  Director- 
General.  Stuyvesant,  at  first,  with  a  great  parade  of  his  vir- 
tue, refused  to  sit  as  a  judge  upon  the  trial  on  account  of  his 
personal  interest  in  the  matter.  Afterwards,  finding  in  all 
probability  the  other  members  of  the  Council  too  leniently 
disposed  to  suit  his  views,  he  sulkily  took  his  seat  with  the 
others,  and  was  the  only  member  of  the  court  who  voted  that 
a  sentence  of  death  should  be  passed  upon  the  prisoner. 
The  judgment  of  the  court  was  sufficiently  severe,  however ; 
Michiel  Picquet  was  sentenced  to  be  transported  to  Holland 
on  the  ship  "Falconer,"  to  serve  a  term  of  eighteen  years' 
imprisonment  in  't  Rasphuis,  the  criminal  prison  of  Amster- 
dam, so-called  from  the  common  occupation  of  the  prisoners 
at  that  time  in  rasping  the  heavy  Brazil  wood  into  dust  for 
dyeing  purposes. 

Before  the  sailing  of  the  vessel,  however,  the  prisoner 
made  his  escape  from  Fort  Amsterdam.  The  Council,  with 
a  polite  attention  to  form,  somewhat  similar  to  that  of 
the  executioner's  clownish  assistant,  calling  the  condemned 
criminal  to  execution,  in  "Measure  for  Measure":  "you 
must  be  so  good,  sir,  to  rise  and  be  put  to  death,"  —  ordered 
Picquet  to  be  summoned  three  times  "by  the  ringing  of 


BANISHMENT  OF  PICQUET  93 


the  bell,  to  come  and  defend  his  case."  That  obstinate  and 
unaccommodating  individual  having  failed  to  appear,  how- 
ever, the  Council  proceeded,  on  July  4,  1647,  to  do  the  best 
it  could  in  vindication  of  its  slighted  authority  by  passing  a 
further  sentence  of  banishment  against  Picquet,  and  of  con- 
fiscation of  his  property.  His  house  at  the  corner  of  Bridge 
and  Stone  streets  is  soon  found  —  probably  by  direct  grant 
from  the  Director  and  Council  —  in  the  possession  of  Hen- 
drick  Willemsen,  a  baker,  who  occupied  the  premises  for 
many  years.1 

1  As  for  Picquet,  he  must  have  subsequently  either  surrendered  himself  or 
been  captured  ;  for  in  the  fall  of  1647  he,  together  with  the  Scotchman,  Andrew 
Forrester,  agent  of  the  Earl  of  Stirling,  who  had  been  imprisoned  by  the  author- 
ities at  New  Amsterdam,  for  asserting  his  principal's  claim  to  Long  Island  was 
sent  away  in  the  ship  "  Valckeuier  "  for  transportation  to  the  Netherlands.  The 
vessel,  however,  on  its  way,  touched  at  an  English  port,  and  while  there,  both  the 
prisoners  made  their  escape.  (Letter  of  the  Directors,  etc.,  to  General  Stuy- 
vesant,  dated  April  7,  1648.) 


CHAPTER  XI 


CORNELIS  MEL YN,  PATROON  OF  STATE N  ISLAND.  — THE 
INDIAN  TROUBLES.  — JOCHEM  PIETERSEN  KUYTER. — 
THE  STRUGGLES  OF  MELYN  AND  KUYTER  AGAINST 
THE  COLONIAL  AUTHORITIES.  —  THE  BARON  VAN  DER 
CAPELLEN.—  SI  BOUT  CLAESEN,  OF  HOORN 

He  was  one 

Of  many  thousand  such  that  die  betimes, 
Whose  story  is  a  fragment  known  to  few. 
Then  comes  the  man  who  has  the  luck  to  live, 
And  he 's  a  prodigy.    Compute  the  chances, 
And  deem  there 's  ne'er  a  one  in  dangerous  times 
Who  wins  the  race  of  glory,  but  than  him 
A  thousand  men  more  gloriously  endowed 
Have  fallen  upon  the  course  ;  a  thousand  others 
Have  had  their  fortunes  foundered  by  a  chance, 
Whilst  lighter  barks  pushed  past  them. 

Taylor  :  "  Philip  Van  Artevelde." 

IT  has  been  already  stated  that  the  bridge  over  the  little 
stream  in  Broad  Street  was  originally  a  short  distance  — 
some  fifty  feet  or  thereabouts  —  north  of  Bridge  Street.  This 
location  carried  the  road  towards  the  ferry  around  a  parcel  of 
land  situated  upon  the  river  shore,  upon  which  stood  the  house 
of  a  man  who  for  half  a  score  of  years  filled  a  very  conspic- 
uous position  in  the  public  eye,  —  Cornelis  Melyn,  of  Antwerp.1 
There  is  something  about  the  determined  character  of 
Cornelis  Melyn,  and  the  long  struggle  which  he  carried  on 
against  the  petty  despots  who  represented  the  authority  of  the 

1  The  name  Melyn,  like  so  many  others  of  the  modern  family  names  among 
persons  descended  from  a  Germanic  ancestry,  is  quite  likely  to  have  been  derived 
from  some  former  place  of  residence  of  the  family,  which  in  this  case,  it  is  not 
improbable,  was  the  village  of  Melin,  about  sixty  miles  southeast  of  Antwerp,  in 
the  direction  of  Maestricht,  from  which  it  is  not  far  distant. 


ANTWERP  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY  95 


West  India  Company  in  New  Amsterdam,  which  lends  an  air 
of  historic  dignity  to  the  man,  and  marks  him  as  one  of  the 
first  of  a  long  line  of  champions  in  the  colony,  of  individual 
rights,  as  against  arbitrary  and  irresponsible  power.  He  came 
naturally  by  his  hatred  of  despotism.  At  his  native  Antwerp, 
in  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century,  he  could  have 
talked  with  men  who  remembered  when  it  was  not  unusual 
for  two  thousand  vessels  or  more  to  be  lying  in  the  port  of 
that  city,  or  for  a  hundred  to  sail  up  the  Scheldt  with  each 
favoring  tide.  They  could  have  told  him  of  misfortune  after 
misfortune  under  the  Spanish  rule,  of  wars  and  grinding  taxes, 
of  the  introduction  of  the  Inquisition,  of  the  dreadful  sack 
of  the  city  by  the  mutinous  Spanish  garrison  in  1576,  when 
six  thousand  of  the  citizens  perished  by  the  sword,  by  fire,  and 
by  water ;  and  he  himself  could  have  seen  how  the  growth  of 
the  commerce  of  Amsterdam,  after  its  emancipation  from  the 
Spanish  incubus,  had  drawn  away  to  itself  the  trade  and  the 
most  enterprising  of  the  tradesmen  of  Antwerp.  Now,  as  he 
trod  the  streets  of  the  city,  their  spaciousness  contrasted 
strangely  with  the  solitude  that  reigned  in  them  ;  he  passed 
by  quaint  old  mansions,  of  which  the  half  were  closed  and 
uninhabited;  but  few  vessels  were  to  be  seen  now  in  the 
Scheldt  or  along  the  canals,  and  upon  the  quays  the  grass 
grew  ;  the  busy  crowds  had  forsaken  the  great  Exchange,  and 
there  were  seen  there  now  "little  more  than  peddlers  and 
fishwomen."  There  was  one  spot  in  the  city  which  must  have 
stirred  strongly  the  feelings  of  Cornelis  Melyn,  and  that  was 
where  a  tall  crucifix  of  gilt  bronze,  marked,  according  to 
story,  the  site  of  the  insulting  statue  erected  half  a  century 
before,  by  order  of  the  bloody  Duke  of  Alva,  where  he  himself, 
in  full  armor,  was  shown  as  trampling  upon  two  prostrate 
figures,  designed  to  represent  the  lords  and  commons  of  Flan- 
ders. The  statue  had  perished  long  before  in  a  tumult  of  the 
indignant  citizens,  but  the  memory  of  it  was  not  likely  soon 
to  fade  away  in  the  decaying  city. 

And  yet  Antwerp  still  retained  much  of  its  former  charm : 

"  A  gilded  halo,  hovering  round  decay," 


96      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


which  had  induced  John  Evelyn,  visiting  it  about  this  time, 
to  speak  of  it  in  his  diary  as  "  sweete  Antwerp  "  —  "  nor  did 
I  ever  observe  a  more  quiet,  cleane,  elegantly  built  and  civil 
place  than  this  magnificent  and  famous  citty  of  Antwerp." 
From  the  well-known  station  of  view  across  the  Scheldt, 
called,  "  Het  Vlaamshe  Hoofd,"  the  Point  of  Flanders,  and 
seen  in  a  bright  afternoon,  when  the  rays  of  the  declining 
sun  threw  into  light  and  shadow  the  quaint  carvings  of  the 
old  mansions,  of  the  churches  and  public  buildings,  and  of  the 
wonderful  spire  of  the  cathedral,  towering  more  than  three 
hundred  feet  above  them  all,  the  city  lay  stretched  along  the 
Scheldt  like  a  gilded  pageant. 

Within  the  city,  too,  still  dwelt  men  of  genius  and  of  learn- 
ing ;  indeed,  in  Melyn's  day,  Antwerp  had  attained  the  height 
of  its  great  artistic  fame,  and  he  may  have  often  seen  or  talked 
with  Rubens,  Van  Dyke,  and  Teniers,  chief  of  a  long  line  of 
predecessors  and  of  followers  in  the  painters'  art.  Still,  what- 
ever pleasant  memories  might  cluster  about  the  old  city,  its 
prospects  under  foreign  rule  were  becoming  darker  and  darker ; 
and  Cornells  Melyn,  a  man  of  competent  means  and  past  his 
younger  years,  —  he  was  born  about  the  year  1602,  —  deter- 
mined, doubtless  not  without  some  pangs,  to  try  his  fortunes 
in  the  New  World.  Leaving  his  family  in  Europe,  he  sailed 
for  New  Amsterdam  in  1639.  Here  his  attention  was  attracted 
to  the  rounded,  forest-clad  hills  and  intervales  of  Staten  Island, 
and  to  its  wide  plains,  upon  which  only  one  or  two  grants  of 
land,  and  those  of  no  great  extent,  had  as  yet  been  made.  He 
sent  an  application  next  year  to  Amsterdam  for  a  grant  from 
the  West  India  Company  to  himself  of  the  remainder  of  the 
island.  This  was  favorably  entertained,  and  he  thereupon 
brought  on  his  family  from  the  Netherlands  and  set  to  work 
vigorously  to  take  the  arduous  steps  necessary  for  developing 
his  tract.  In  1642  he  received  his  ground-brief  or  patent  for 
the  island,  upon  which  he  had  already  established  a  number  of 
settlers,  among  whom,  as  it  is  supposed,  he  himself  resided. 

The  period  in  which  Melyn  began  the  clearing  for  his  plan- 
tations upon  Staten  Island  was  an  inauspicious  one.   The  good 


THE  RARITAN  INDIANS 


97 


understanding  which  had  prevailed  between  the  Dutch  and 
the  native  Indians  for  many  years  after  the  first  settlement  of 
the  former  had  begun  to  be  seriously  disturbed  as  the  colonists 
grew  stronger  and  became  more  aggressive.  It  was  in  the  year 
1640,  and  in  all  probability  soon  after  Melyn  had  made  his 
application  to  the  West  India  Company  for  land  upon  Staten 
Island,  that  a  party  of  Raritan  Indians,  whose  haunts  were 
upon  that  island  and  upon  the  mainland  in  the  vicinity  of  the 
river  which  still  bears  their  name,  was  charged  with  having 
committed  some  petty  depredations  upon  the  plantation  of 
David  Pietersen  de  Vries,  who  had  already  commenced  a  clear- 
ing upon  the  grant  of  land  he  had  obtained  on  the  island.  To 
punish  the  savages  for  this  affair  (which  appears  to  have  been 
greatly  exaggerated,  even  if  the  charges  were  not  wholly 
untrue),  Kieft,  who  seems  to  have  been  painfully  conscious 
that  he  had  done  nothing  as  yet  to  distinguish  himself  in  his 
office,  now  determined  to  send  an  expedition  against  these 
Indians.  The  party  was  headed  by  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven, 
whose  treacherous  and  cruel  disposition  was  well  adapted  for 
matters  of  this  kind.  The  force  numbered  seventy  men,  and 
taking  the  Indians  by  surprise  at  their  villages  —  which  seem 
to  have  been  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  present  Perth  Amboy, 
or  Woodbridge  —  they  slaughtered  several  of  the  savages,  and 
burned  the  crops  in  their  fields.  Van  Tienhoven  and  his  band 
of  Dutch  warriors  returned  to  New  Amsterdam,  it  is  true, 
unharmed  and  in  high  feather  after  this  feat ;  but  the  14  heathen  " 
Raritans,  as  Kieft  was  fond  of  calling  them,  were  upon  one 
point  just  about  as  fully  enlightened  as  their  Christian  ene- 
mies. They  understood  thoroughly  the  lex  talionis,  and  they 
had,  moreover,  abundant  opportunities  for  putting  it  in  prac- 
tice. They  soon  found  their  opportunity,  and  attacked  the 
lonely  plantation  of  De  Vries  upon  Staten  Island,  where  they 
killed  four  of  his  tobacco  planters,  destroyed  the  crops,  and 
fired  the  buildings.  The  parties  were  now  in  one  sense  quits  ; 
the  Indians  were  henceforth  upon  their  guard,  and  any  further 
expeditions  against  them  were  not  likely  to  be  attended  by 
success.    In  this  emergency  Kieft  bethought  himself  of  hiring 


98      NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


the  other  Indians  to  murder  the  Raritans ;  the  Council  makes 
a  report  on  the  4th  of  J  uly,  1641 :  "  Wherefore,  considering 
the  circumstances,  we  have  adopted  the  means  which  seem  to 
us  best  suited  to  the  emergency,  viz. :  To  secure  the  help  of 
our  Indian  allies  in  their  (the  Raritans')  neighborhood,  over 
whose  territory  the  enemy  must  cross,"  —  that  is,  in  attempt- 
ing to  reach  New  Amsterdam,  —  "  and  who  may  stop  them  in 
their  wild  forays,  or  at  least  give  timely  notice  of  their  ap- 
proach. And  in  order  to  encourage  them  the  more,  and  lure 
them  with  greater  ardor  to  espouse  our  cause,  we  engaged  to 
pay  them,  for  every  head  of  a  Raritan,  ten  fathoms  of  sewant," 
—  worth  about  seventeen  dollars  of  the  present  currency,  — 
"  and  for  every  head  of  any  of  those  who  murdered  our  people 
on  Staten  Island,  twenty  fathoms  of  sewant."  These  measures 
had  little  effect  except  to  further  enrage  the  Indians  against 
Kieft  and  the  Dutch.  It  was  under  these  inauspicious  circum- 
stances that  Cornells  Melyn  began  his  settlement  upon  Staten 
Island. 

He  seems  to  have  remained  unmolested  by  the  Indians  for 
a  considerable  time,  and  this  was  doubtless  owing  to  the 
numerical  strength  of  his  colony.  We  have  no  exact  infor- 
mation upon  this  point,  but  as  he  had  spent  large  sums  of 
money  in  furnishing  stock  and  implements,  he  had  undoubt- 
edly secured  a  goodly  number  of  colonists.  At  this  period 
he  was  evidently  in  harmony  with  Director-General  Kieft, 
who  apparently  had  private  business  relations  with  him. 
Indeed,  it  is  said  that  his  refusal  to  admit  Kieft  to  full  part- 
nership in  his  Staten  Island  venture  was  one  of  the  causes  of 
the  Director-General's  bitter  hatred  of  him  afterwards,  — 
though  this  is  abundantly  explained  by  other  causes. 

In  the  mean  time,  trouble  was  threatened  in  another  quar- 
ter. This  grew  out  of  the  murder,  in  the  summer  of  1641,  of 
Claes  Cornelissen  Swits,  commonly  known  as  Claes  Rade- 
maker,  or  Claes  the  wheelwright,  by  an  Indian  of  the  Weck- 
quaskeek  tribe  of  Indians,  inhabiting  the  shores  of  the 
Hudson,  in  the  lower  part  of  the  present  Westchester  County. 
The  murder  is  supposed  to  have  been  an  act  of  private  re- 


KIEFT'S  PLANS  AGAINST  THE  INDIANS  99 

venge  for  the  slaying  and  robbery  of  an  uncle  of  the  mur- 
derer many  years  before,  by  some  of  the  lawless  Europeans 
infesting  the  settlement,  the  Indians  having  failed  to  obtain 
any  redress  from  the  Dutch  authorities.  A  prompt  demand 
was  made  upon  the  tribe  for  the  surrender  of  the  murderer  of 
Claes  Cornelissen.  This,  however,  was  not  complied  with, 
the  Indians  claiming,  probably  enough  with  truth,  that  he 
was  out  of  their  reach. 

At  this  time,  according  to  the  Memorial  afterwards  pre- 
sented to  the  West  India  Company,  on  behalf  of  the  people 
of  New  Amsterdam,  "  a  hankering  after  war  had  wholly 
seized  on  the  Director,"  and  the  affair  of  Swits  seems  to  have 
afforded  Kieft  a  long  sought  for  opportunity  to  carry  out  his 
plans.  It  is  rather  difficult  to  understand  the  tortuous  policy 
of  this  man.  That  he  was  desirous  of  ridding  the  vicinity  of 
New  Amsterdam  of  the  troublesome  native  tribes  and  of  get- 
ting possession  of  their  lands  as  one  of  the  fruits  of  conquest, 
is  quite  evident ;  on  the  other  hand,  making  due  allowance 
for  the  blind  arrogance  so  frequently  shown  in  dealings  by 
individuals  of  a  so-called  "  dominant  race  "  in  their  dealings 
with  a  supposed  inferior  one,  Kieft  must  have  been  well 
aware  that  acts  of  violent  and  wholesale  aggression  against 
the  Indians  would  inevitably  be  resented  by  them,  and  that 
in  such  case  their  power  of  inflicting  injury  upon  the  scat- 
tered colonists  and  their  farms  would  be  most  formidable.  It 
is  difficult  to  reach  any  other  conclusion  than  that  the  Di- 
rector-General meant,  from  the  first,  to  entrap  the  neighboring 
Indians  and  to  exterminate  them  at  one  blow,  if  possible, 
trusting  that,  afterwards,  distance  and  dissensions  among  the 
tribes  would  prevent  retaliation  from  the  remoter  Indians. 

The  business  was  by  no  means  an  easy  one,  however.  If 
he  succeeded,  he  might  doubtless  expect  to  go  down  to  pos- 
terity as  a  hero  and  a  great  promoter  of  civilization  ;  but,  on 
the  other  hand,  if  he  should  fail,  and  disastrous  results  to  the 
colony  should  ensue,  there  would  be  a  heavy  account  to  settle 
with  his  superiors,  the  West  India  Company.  Under  these 
circumstances,  lie  craftily  determined  to  try  to  implicate  the 


100     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


whole  body  of  colonists  in  the  onslaught  he  was  preparing 
to  make  upon  the  Indians,  and  to  make  it  appear  that  he 
was  merely  acting  at  their  instance  and  request,  thus  re- 
lieving himself  from  liability  for  the  bloody  experiment. 
Accordingly,  on  the  29th  of  August,  1641,  the  "  heads  of 
families "  in  New  Amsterdam,  who  had  previously  had  un- 
commonly little  to  say  about  the  affairs  of  the  community, 
were  startled  by  having  certain  propositions  publicly  sub- 
mitted for  their  discussion  by  the  benevolent  Director- 
General  and  his  Council,  to  the  following  effect : 

"  1.  If  it  is  not  just  that  the  murder  lately  committed  by  a 
savage  upon  Claes  Swits  be  avenged ;  and  in  case  the  Indians 
will  not  surrender  the  murderer,  if  it  is  not  just  to  destroy 
the  whole  village  to  which  he  belongs  ? 

"  2.  When  and  in  what  manner  this  should  be  executed  ? 

"  3.  By  whom  can  it  be  effected?  " 

The  occasion  was  a  momentous  one  :  the  citizens  met  and 
appointed  a  committee  of  twelve,  composed  of  some  of  the 
most  energetic  individuals  among  them,  this  committee  form- 
ing the  somewhat  celebrated  body  known  as  "the  Twelve 
Men;,,  at  their  head  was  Cornelis  Melyn.  Most  of  the 
members  of  this  body  were  men  who  had  much  at  stake  in 
the  event  of  hostilities  with  the  natives.  They  appear  to 
have  understood  Kieft's  design  from  the  first,  but  their  posi- 
tion was  a  difficult  one  :  if  they  should  advise  the  Director  and 
Council  against  attempting  to  enforce  by  violence  their  claims 
against  the  Indians,  they  knew  that  they  would  be  charged  at 
once  with  pusillanimity,  lack  of  patriotism,  and  disaffection 
to  the  government  by  the  Director  and  his  Council,  following 
the  usual  custom  of  those  in  authority  when  their  line  of 
governmental  action,  (no  matter  how  unjust,  impracticable, 
or  dangerous  it  may  be),  is  opposed  or  criticised  by  the  sub- 
ject :  furthermore,  it  might  have  a  bad  effect  upon  the  natives 
to  place  themselves  formally  upon  record  as  being  opposed  to 
the  employment  of  force. 

Accordingly,  with  all  these  things  in  view,  they  drew  up,  in 
the  fall  of  the  same  year,  1641,  an  answer  to  the  Director's  ques- 


COMMITTEE  OF  "THE  TWELVE  MEN"  101 


tions,  in  which  answer  considerable  astuteness  was  displayed. 
In  this  document  the  Committee,  while  assenting  to  the  use  of 
force  if  necessary  against  the  Indians,  recommend  many  safe- 
guards in  the  way  of  peaceable  demands,  mild  demeanor  towards 
the  natives,  etc.,  and  finally  an  expedition  against  them  (prob- 
ably for  the  purpose  of  securing  hostages),  when  the  Indian 
warriors  should  be  absent  on  their  hunting  expeditions.  The 
sting  to  the  Director-General,  however,  lay  in  the  following 
clause :  "  That  as  the  people  recognize  no  other  head  than 
the  Director-General,  therefore  they  prefer  that  he  should 
lead  the  van,  while  they,  on  their  part,  offer  their  persons  to 
follow  his  steps  and  to  obey  his  commands." 

The  Director-General  had  been  outwitted:  the  answer  of 
"  the  Twelve  Men "  was  coldly  received  by  him,  and  no 
measures  of  importance  were  taken  for  a  considerable  period 
against  the  Indians.  Melyn  and  his  committee,  however, 
proceeded  further,  and  therein  seems  to  lie  their  great  mis- 
take. In  their  appointment  by  the  people,  though  it  had  really 
been  made  only  for  a  special  and  limited  purpose,  they 
thought  they  saw  an  opportunity  for  establishing  a  popular 
voice  in  the  affairs  of  the  colony,  which  had  hitherto  been 
entirely  lacking.  Accordingly,  on  the  21st  of  January,  1642, 
"  the  Twelve  Men  "  sent  in  a  petition  to  the  Director-General, 
designating  themselves  as  "  Selectmen  on  behalf  of  the  Com- 
monalty of  New  Netherland,"  —  and  praying  for  a  redress  of 
certain  grievances ;  they  requested  that  "  the  Council  shall 
from  this  time  be  rendered  complete  in  members,  especially 
as  the  council  of  a  small  village  in  Fatherland  consists  of 
five  and  seven  schepens;  that,  from  now  henceforth,  the 
Director  and  Council  do  not  try  any  criminals,  unless  five 
Councillors  be  present,  inasmuch  as  the  Commonalty  talk 
considerably  about  it ;  "  they  further  request  that  representa- 
tion should  be  had  in  the  meetings  of  the  Council,  "  so  that 
taxes  may  not  be  imposed  on  the  country  in  the  absence  of  the 
Twelve." 

Kieft  was  furious ;  the  body  which  he  had  created  to 
further  his  own  crooked  designs  had  not  only  thwarted  him 


102 


NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


in  them,  but  now  was  insolently  attempting  to  interfere  in  his 
favorite  method  of  government,  which  was  the  absolute  con- 
trol of  affairs  by  himself,  with  two  or  three  dependent  and 
obsequious  councillors  to  use  as  "  buffers,"  to  protect  himself 
from  injury;  a  few  days  after  the  receipt  of  this  petition,  he 
made  a  brusque  order,  forbidding  "  the  Twelve  Men  "  from 
holding  any  further  meetings.1 

Matters  ran  along  in  this  way  until  the  following  winter, 
when  the  Weckquaskeek  Indians,  fleeing  before  the  raid  of 
the  Mohawks  from  the  north,  sought  refuge  in  the  vicinity  of 
New  Amsterdam,  as  has  been  already  noticed.2  Kieft  was 
now  in  high  spirits :  his  long-sought  opportunity  for  exter- 
minating the  Indians  was  at  hand;  he  seems  to  have  per- 
suaded himself  that  Providence  had  been  playing  directly 
into  his  hands,  but  still  he  did  not  wish  to  rely  entirely  upon 
Providence ;  he  must  have  some  means  of  implicating  the 
people  at  large  in  the  business;  but  this  was  not  an  easy 
matter,  since  he  had  forbidden  the  committee  which  they  had 
appointed  from  holding  any  meetings,  and  he  knew  very 
well  that  if  he  should  call  them  together  again,  they  would  in 
all  probability  disapprove  of  a  general  massacre  of  the  Indians. 
He  concluded,  under  these  circumstances,  to  adopt  what  was 
perhaps  one  of  the  most  impudent  tricks  ever  devised  by  men 
in  authority  to  try  to  give  an  appearance  of  justification  to 
their  own  unwarrantable  acts.  There  was  much  public  gos- 
sip respecting  a  certain  Shrovetide  dinner,  about  this  time 
(February,  1643),  at  the  farmhouse,  on  Broadway  near  the 
present  Pine  Street,  of  Jan  Damen,  —  one  of  the  Committee 

1  "February  8th,  1642.  —  Whereas  the  Commonalty,  at  our  request,  appointed 
The  Twelve  to  communicate  their  good  counsel  and  advise  on  the  subject  of  the 
murder  of  Switz,  and  this  being  now  completed  we  do  hereby  thank  them  for  the 
trouble  they  have  taken,  and  shall,  with  God's  help,  make  use  of  their  rendered 
written  advice  in  its  own  time.  .  .  .  The  said  twelve  men  shall  now  henceforth 
hold  no  further  meeting,  as  the  same  tends  to' a  dangerous  consequence  and  to 
the  great  injury,  both  of  the  country  and  our  authority.  We  do  therefore  hereby 
forbid  them  calling  any  manner  of  assemblage  or  meeting,  except  by  our  express 
order,  on  pain  of  being  punished  as  disobedient  subjects." 

2  See  page  22,  ante. 


MASSACRE  OF  THE  INDIANS 


103 


of  Twelve,  —  at  which  were  present,  with  Kieft,  Cornells  van 
Tienhoven,  the  secretary,  and  Abraham  Verplanck  (two  of 
the  sons-in-law  of  Damen),  and  Maryn  Adriaensen,  a  sort  of 
dependant  and  debtor  of  the  latter ;  at  this  dinner  the  Shrove 
pancakes  were,  it  was  said,  washed  down  with  mysterious 
toasts  to  the  success  of  some  great  enterprise  which  was  on 
foot. 

However  this  may  be,  a  petition  was  entered  upon  the 
minutes  of  the  Council  in  the  following  remarkable  terms : 

To  the  Honorable  "Willem  Kieft,  Director-General  of  New  Nether- 
land,  and  his  Honorable  Council :  — 
The  whole  of  the  freemen  respectfully  represent  that  though 
heretofore  much  innocent  blood  was  spilled  by  the  savages  without 
having  had  any  reason  or  cause  therefor,  yet  your  Honors  made 
peace  on  condition  that  the  chiefs  should  deliver  the  murderer 
into  our  hands  (either  dead  or  alive),  wherein  they  have  failed  up 
to  the  present  time :  the  reputation  which  our  nation  hath  in  other 
countries  has  thus  been  diminished,  even  notwithstanding  innocent 
blood  calleth  aloud  to  God  for  revenge ;  we  therefore  request  your 
Honors  to  be  pleased  to  authorize  us  to  attack  the  Indians  as 
enemies,  whilst  God  hath  delivered  them  into  our  hands ;  for 
which  purpose  we  offer  our  persons.  This  can  be  effected  at  one 
place  by  the  freemen,  and  at  the  other  by  the  soldiers. 

Your  Honor's  Subjects, 

(Signed)  Maryn  Adriaensen 
Jan  Jansen  Damen 
Abm  Planck. 

(Lower  Stood) 

By  their  authority 

Corns  van  Tienhoven,  Secretary. 

The  savage  massacre  of  the  Indians  followed,  and  then  the 
swift  retaliation  upon  the  Dutch,  which  in  the  course  of  a 
few  months  reduced  the  thirty  or  forty  farmhouses  on  Man- 
hattan Island  to  four  or  five  which  still  remained  standing, 
and  which  drove  in  the  survivors  of  the  Indian  depredations 
to  dwell  in  «  huts  of  straw  "  around  Fort  Amsterdam.  The 
number  of  colonists  at  Cornelis  Melyn's  settlement  upon 


104       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Staten  Island  seems  to  have  retarded  its  fate  for  a  time.  It 
was  still  unattacked  as  late  as  October,  1643,  though  "  hourly 
expecting  an  assault,"  —  which  soon  afterwards  came,  and 
left  it  a  desolate  waste.  Melyn  had,  in  the  mean  time, 
removed  his  family  to  New  Amsterdam,  and  sought  out  a 
place  of  abode  there. 

East  of  "the  Ditch"  in  Broad  Street  lay  a  low  rise  of 
land  along  the  East  River ;  towards  the  shore,  it  terminated 
in  a  crumbling  bank  of  no  great  height,  above  the  stony 
beach,  and  at  a  distance  of  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  feet 
back  from  the  shore,  it  fell  away  into  a  low  and  damp  depres- 
sion, which  formed  an  easterly  arm  to  the  swamp  occupying 
the  vicinity  of  Broad  Street,  and  which  was  called,  in  the 
early  days  of  the  colony,  "  Blommaert's  Vly,"  as  has  already 
been  stated.  Along  the  middle  of  this  low  ridge,  the  officers 
of  the  Company  had  established  the  road  leading  out  from  the 
bridge  to  the  ferry  to  Long  Island.  It  soon  acquired  the 
name  of  Hoogh  Straet,  —  the  High  Street;  after  the  sur- 
render to  the  English  in  1664,  it  gradually  came  to  be  called 
Duke's  Street,  in  honor  of  the  Duke  of  York ;  and  at  present 
it  forms  the  easterly  portion  of  Stone  Street,  being  nearly 
a  continuation  of  the  street  originally  known  by  that  name. 
Upon  the  south  side  of  this  street,  just  west  of  the  present 
Coenties  Alley,  and  situated  well  back  towards  the  shore,  the 
Director  and  Council  had  erected,  in  1641,  the  commodious 
building  known  as  the  Great  Tavern,  afterwards  in  part  used 
as  the  Town  Hall,  of  which  further  notice  will  be  taken  here- 
after. From  the  present  Broad  Street  to  the  Great  Tavern, 
all  the  land  lying  between  the  Hoogh  Straet  and  the  shore 
had  been  taken  up,  at  an  early  date,  by  two  individuals,  one 
of  whom  was  Burger  Jorissen,  a  man  of  prominence  in  the 
town,  who  had  built  a  house  here,  and  received  a  ground-brief 
for  it  in  1643 ;  he  occupied  a  plot  of  about  one  hundred  and 
thirty-five  English  feet  frontage,  next  adjoining  the  tavern. 
The  other  occupant  was  located  upon  a  much  smaller  plot, 
about  at  the  corner  of  the  present  Broad  Street ;  this  was  one 
Eben  Reddenhaus,  a  German  from  the  principality  of  Waldeck, 


CORNELIS  MELYN'S  HOUSE 


105 


who  had  recently  (in  1641)  married  in  New  Amsterdam, 
and  built  a  house  here,  but  who  died  soon  afterwards.  There 
remained  but  one  more  available  parcel  along  the  river  in  this 
vicinity,  and  that  one  covered  the  end  of  the  present  Broad 
Street,  at  that  time  (as  already  stated)  not  designed  to  be 
kept  open  as  a  street.  Of  this  parcel,  Cornells  Melyn  received 
a  ground-brief  in  1643 ;  it  was  about  sixty-two  English  feet 
in  front  along  the  road,  which  with  the  bridge  lay  north  of  it, 
and  it  extended  in  depth  about  eighty-eight  English  feet  to 
the  river  shore ;  through  it  the  stream  or  ditch  from  Blom- 
maerts  Vly  ran  into  the  East  River. 

Here,  then,  Cornelis  Melyn  built  his  house,  evidently  a 
modest  one,  designed  only  for  occasional  use  in  troublesome 
times.  It  would  appear  to  have  been  a  two-story  house  of 
small  size  ;  in  all  probability  built  of  brick.  This  house  was 
removed  about  1657,  when  the  authorities  determined  to 
change  the  ditch  in  Broad  Street  into  a  "  Graft,"  or  canal, 
with  a  roadway  on  each  side  of  the  same  ;  its  location  appears 
to  have  been  in  the  easterly  half  of  the  present  Broad  Street, 
midway  between  Stone  and  Pearl  streets.  Desiring  to  con- 
trol more  land  in  this  vicinity  than  his  original  small  plot, 
Melyn  bought,  in  August,  1644,  from  the  widow  of  Eben 
Reddenhaus,  for  the  sum  of  250  guilders,  or  about  8100,  her 
house  and  ground,  and  in  December  of  the  same  year,  from 
Burger  Jorissen,  his  house  and  larger  parcel  for  950  guilders, 
or  $380,  so  that  he  now  owned  all  the  land  along  the  river 
from  "  the  Ditch  "  to  the  City  Tavern. 

Melyn's  residence  in  New  Amsterdam,  taken  in  conjunc- 
tion with  the  forlorn  condition  of  the  colonists,  seems  to  have 
stimulated  him  to  more  active  exertions.  In  the  fall  of  1643, 
he,  with  his  associates,  then  known  from  their  number  as  "  the 
Eight  Men,"  addressed  Memorials  both  to  the  States-General 
of  the  Netherlands  and  to  the  West  India  Company,  setting 
forth  the  melancholy  state  of  their  affairs,  and  depicting  in 
vivid  colors  the  ravages  of  the  Indians  ;  they  tell  how  "  daily 
in  our  houses  and  fields  have  they  cruelly  murdered  men  and 
women,  and  with  hatchets  and  tomahawks  struck  little  chil- 


106       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


dren  dead  in  their  parents'  arms  or  before  their  doors,  or  car- 
ried them  awa}'  into  bondage  ;  the  .  houses  and  grain  barracks 
are  burnt  with  the  produce  ;  cattle  of  all  descriptions  are  slain 
and  destroyed,  and  such  as  remain  must  perish  this  approach- 
ing winter  for  want  of  fodder.  Almost  every  place  is  aban- 
doned. .  .  .  We  wretched  people  must  skulk  with  wives  and 
little  ones  that  still  survive  in  poverty  together,  in  and  around 
the  fort  at  the  Manhattans,  where  we  are  not  safe  even  for 
an  hour."  These  Memorials,  however,  contained  something 
in  the  nature  of  a  threat,  which,  while  it  was  natural  enough 
under  the  circumstances,  was  probably  not  well  advised: 
"  Should  suitable  assistance  not  arrive  (contrary  to  our  ex- 
pectations), we  shall  through  necessity,  in  order  to  save  the 
lives  of  those  who  remain,  be  obliged  to  betake  ourselves  to 
the  English  at  the  East,  who  would  like  nothing  better  than 
to  possess  this  place."  These  suggestions,  though  possibly 
they  may  not  have  had  much  effect  upon  the  members  of  the 
States-General,  seem  to  have  sunk  deeply  into  the  minds  of 
some  of  the  Directors  of  the  West  India  Company,  and  to 
have  created  with  them  a  prejudice  against  the  memorialists, 
which  afterwards  bore  bitter  fruit  for  the  latter. 

In  the  mean  time,  Kief  t  had  been  bestirring  himself  to  clear 
away  the  odium  for  the  Indian  massacre  from  his  name,  and 
to  make  it  appear  that  it  had  been  the  work  of  the  people,  in 
opposition  to  his  own  personal  views  ;  and  he  had  sent  ac- 
cordingly to  the  West  India  Company  a  pamphlet  containing 
a  resume*  of  the  whole  affair,  which  pamphlet,  according  to 
Dominie  Bogardus,  "  contained  more  lies  than  lines."  The 
effrontery  of  the  man  was  so  amazing  that  in  1644  Melyn  and 
his  associates  determined  to  send  a  private  communication 
or  memorial  to  the  West  India  Company  directing  their  atten- 
tion to  the  falsehoods  "which  Kieft  was  endeavoring  to  dis- 
seminate. This  document,  bearing  date  28th  October,  1644, 
though  drawn  up  under  circumstances  of  great  provocation, 
contained  much  vituperation  of  Kieft  and  his  advisers,  and 
proved  to  be  the  source  of  much  trouble  for  Cornells  Melyn,  who 
was  considered,  probably  with  justice,  as  having  been  its  author. 


CAPTAIN  KUYTER 


107 


Although  the  proceedings  of  "  the  Eight  Men"  were  con- 
ducted with  secrecy,  and  though  Kieft  does  not  appear  to 
have  been  aware  for  a  considerable  period  of  the  communi- 
cation of  1644  to  the  West  India  Company,  there  seems  to 
have  been  early  manifested  a  bad  state  of  feeling  on  his  part 
towards  Cornells  Melyn,  which  displayed  itself  in  various  petty 
annoyances  towards  the  latter.  In  1645,  he  was  charged  by 
the  fiscal  with  having  sold  wine  to  the  Indians,  but  nothing 
appears  to  have  come  of  the  affair.  Melyn  had  at  this  time 
leased  about  two  acres  of  ground  from  the  officers  of  the 
Company,  covering  the  site  of  the  present  Trinity  Church 
and  the  northern  portion  of  the  churchyard,  and  extending 
to  the  river  bank.  This  he  employed  for  the  purpose  of 
raising  grain,  evidently  for  his  family  use.  On  the  31st  of 
May,  1646,  Kieft  and  his  Council,  pettishly  alleging  that 
Melyn,  u  having  planted  and  fenced  a  piece  of  land  north  of 
the  Company's  garden,  taking  in  more  ground  than  belonged 
to  him,  sweeping  away  with  a  curve  behind  said  garden,  and 
making  use  of  the  sods  and  earth  of  the  Company's  soil  for 
security  of  said  land,"  ordered  that  "  he  may  cut  his  grain, 
and  then  deliver  up  the  Company's  ground  in  the  same  con- 
dition as  in  the  Spring." 

In  the  mean  time,  Cornelis  Melyn  acquired,  at  about  this 
period,  a  neighbor  who  was  to  prove  a  faithful  ally  to  him, 
and  whose  fortunes  were  to  be  bound  up  together  with  his 
own  for  several  years  to  come.  This  was  the  worthy  Captain 
Jochem  Pietersen  Kuyter,  an  ex-sea-captain  in  the  Danish 
service,  and  one  of  the  pioneers  of  the  settlement  at  Harlem. 

The  humble  cottage  of  Eben  Reddenhaus,  which  had  been 
bought  by  Melyn,  as  above  stated,  and  which  stood  near 
the  northeast  corner  of  the  present  Pearl  and  Broad  streets, 
was  in  a  short  time  sold  by  him  to  one  Seger  Teunissen. 
This  man  was  soon  afterwards  killed  by  the  Indians,  and 
upon  the  West  India  Company's  officers  taking  charge  of  his 
property,  they  found  in  a  trading  "  yacht  "  belonging  to  him 
certain  goods  which  had  not  been  entered  with  the  revenue 
officials.    Kieft,  in  pursuance  of  his  usual  arbitrary  course  of 


108       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


conduct,  and,  as  was  claimed,  without  any  form  of  trial,  and 
in  disregard  of  the  rights  of  Teunissen's  widow,  immediately 
ordered  his  property  to  be  confiscated  and  sold ;  and  it  is 
supposed  that  it  was  under  these  proceedings  that  the  house 
on  the  shore  of  the  East  River  was  purchased  by  Jochem 
Pietersen  Kuyter,  who  took  up  his  residence  there,  after  his 
farmhouse  near  the  Harlem  River  had  been  destroyed  by  the 
Indians  in  1644. 

Jochem  Pietersen  Kuyter  was  a  native  of  the  District  of 
Ditmarssen,  that  portion  of  the  Duchy  of  Holstein  which  lies 
on  the  German  Ocean,  between  the  mouths  of  the  Elbe  and 
the  Eyder  rivers,  the  broad  flat  meadows  of  which  district, 
well  stocked  with  the  black  and  white  cattle  of  the  country, 
the  passenger,  coming  down  the  Elbe  from  Hamburg,  may 
see  stretching  away  to  his  right. 

There  was  much  in  the  situation  and  prospects  of  Kuyter 
that  was  similar  to  those  of  Cornells  Melyn.  Like  the  latter, 
he  was  a  man  of  education  and  of  some  means,  who  had  come 
over  in  the  year  1639,  well  furnished  with  cattle,  implements, 
and  labor  for  commencing  a  plantation  on  a  fairly  large  scale. 
As  an  energetic  colonizer,  in  the  prime  of  his  activity,  —  he 
was  born  about  1597,  — he  was  much  courted  and  favored  by 
the  West  India  Company,  which  desired  to  attract  such  men 
to  its  colony.  With  him  came  his  friend  Jonas  Bronck,  from 
whose  bouwery  north  of  the  Harlem,  the  Bronx  River,  which 
flowed  near  it,  received  its  name,  and  thence  the  important 
division  of  New  York  City  known  as  the  Borough  of  the 
Bronx.  With  his  farmers  and  herdsmen,  Kuyter  settled  on 
the  opposite  side  of  the  Harlem  River  from  his  friend  Jonas 
Bronck,  upon  a  tract  of  nearly  four  hundred  acres  of  fine 
farming  land,  of  which  he  had  obtained  a  grant  from  the 
West  India  Company.  This  tract  stretched  along  the  Harlem 
River  from  about  the  present  One  Hundred  and  Twenty- 
seventh  to  One  Hundred  and  Fortieth  streets,  and  was  com- 
monly known,  long  after  his  memory  had  faded  away  among 
men,  as  "  Jochem  Pieter's  Flats ; "  Kuyter  himself  called  it 
"  Zegendaal,"  or  "  Vale  of  Blessing."    Although  much  of  his 


STUYVESANT'S  ARRIVAL 


109 


time  away  from  the  settlement  and  at  the  other  end  of  Man- 
hattan Island,  he  interested  himself  in  the  progress  of  the 
village,  and  in  1642  was  one  of  the  "  kerkmeesters  "  chosen 
to  oversee  the  erection  of  the  new  church  in  the  fort ;  not, 
says  Riker  in  his  "  History  of  Harlem,"  without  an  eye  to  the 
services  of  his  workmen,  44  who  were  skilled  and  would  pre- 
pare the  timber."  By  this  time  his  plantation  was  well 
established  and  was  yielding  good  returns  of  tobacco.  Con- 
scious of  its  exposed  position,  he,  like  most  of  the  Board  of 
Twelve  Men  (of  which  he  was  a  member),  was  averse  to  using 
violent  measures  with  the  Indians,  and  he  foretold  to  Kieft 
the  quick  retribution  which  would  ensue  for  their  massacre. 
His  own  bouwery  house,  being  well  palisaded  about,  escaped 
the  first  devastations  of  the  Indians,  but  on  the  5th  of  March, 
1644,  he  being  then  absent  from  the  farm,  the  buildings,  though 
guarded,  were  set  on  fire  in  the  night  and  destroyed  by  the 
savages. 

Like  Melyn,  Kuyter  was  now  forced  to  seek  an  abode  for 
himself  in  the  village  of  New  Amsterdam,  and  in  this  way 
apparently  he  came  to  purchase  the  small  house  at  the  corner 
of  Broad  and  Pearl  streets,  already  spoken  of.  Henceforth, 
he  and  Cornells  Melyn  were  closely  associated  in  their  rela- 
tions towards  Kieft  and  towards  his  successor,  Director- 
General  Stuyvesant. 

This  latter  person,  who  had  taken  the  place  of  Kieft  by 
appointment  from  the  West  India  Company  in  1646,  had 
been  long  looked  for,  and  in  May,  1647,  he  arrived  at  New 
Amsterdam.  Most  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  town  were  as- 
sembled on  Schreyers  Hoek  and  at  the  little  dock  when  the 
new  Director- General  landed  ;  and  they  accompanied  him  to 
the  fort,  where  Kieft  was  ready  to  surrender  the  government. 
In  doing  so,  he,  with  great  assurance,  thanked  the  citizens  for 
the  attachment  and  fidelity  they  had  always  shown  to  him, 
and  requested  their  formal  indorsement  of  his  administration. 
On  all  sides  a  loud  shout  of  dissent  went  up  from  the  crowd, 
half  of  whom,  probably,  had  been  ruined  as  the  result  of  his 
atrocious  Indian  policy;  and  Melyn  and  Kuyter  declared 


110       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


roundly  that  they  had  nothing  to  thank  him  for,  and  no 
approval  to  give. 

This  scene  seems  to  have  made  a  deep  impression  upon  one 
person  at  least,  and  that  one  was  the  new  Director- General. 
It  was  not  that  he  approved  of  Kieft's  conduct  toward  the 
Indians  ;  on  the  contrary,  he  believed  in  giving  the  latter  just 
and  conciliatory  treatment,  not  so  much,  in  all  probability,  on 
account  of  the  absolute  right  of  the  matter,  but  by  reason  of 
the  power  possessed  by  the  natives  of  doing  harm  to  the  col- 
ony. Like  most  despotical-minded  men  placed  in  positions 
of  considerable  power,  however,  Stuyvesant  entertained  a 
profound  jealousy  of  those  who  would  be  likely  to  criticise 
his  acts  or  to  attempt  to  thwart  his  will,  and  such  men  he 
saw  at  once  in  Cornells  Melyn  and  in  Jochem  Pietersen 
Kuyter,  and  he  undoubtedly  entered  upon  his  administration 
with  a  hearty  hatred  of  them. 

His  hatred  was  not  long  in  showing  itself.  Within  a  few 
days  after  Kieft  had  delivered  up  his  office,  Melyn  and  Kuyter, 
as  representatives  of  the  old  board  known  as  "the  Eight 
Men,"  brought  a  formal  complaint  against  Kieft,  and  asked 
for  an  inquiry  into  the  abuses  of  his  late  government,  and 
respecting  his  treatment  of  the  Indians.  They  received  a 
prompt  answer  from  Stuyvesant  that  he  considered  the  de- 
nials of  the  late  Director-General  as  of  more  weight  than  any 
evidence  his  antagonists  could  bring  to  support  their  charges  ; 
he  would  recognize  them  in  no  political  capacity,  but  consid- 
ered them  merely  as  "  perturbators  of  the  public  peace."  The 
Director-General  and  Council  accordingly  declined  to  entertain 
their  complaint. 

Melyn  and  Kuyter  had  in  fact  ventured  upon  very  danger- 
ous ground.  Unwittingly  they  had  come  before  a  magistrate 
as  thoroughly  prejudiced  as  any  judge  that  ever  sat  upon  a 
bench  of  justice,  ministering  to  his  own  interests  and  passions 
while  making  pretences  of  doing  equity.  At  the  time  of 
their  private  communication  to  the  West  India  Company, 
respecting  Kieft,  in  October,  1644,  Peter  Stuyvesant  had  been 
admitted  as  one  of  the  Directors  of  that  Company.   No  direct 


TRIAL  OF  MELYN  AND  KUYTER  111 


action  appears  to  have  been  taken  in  the  matter  by  the  West 
India  Company,  bnt  when  Stuyvesant  came  from  the  Nether- 
lands in  the  spring  of  1647,  he  brought  to  Kieft  a  copy  of  the 
letter  of  "  the  Eight  Men,"  which  seems  to  have  been  the 
first  information  Kieft  had  received  of  that  communication. 
Thoroughly  enraged,  and  very  sure  of  his  judge,  Kieft,  on 
June  19,  1647,  brought  criminal  charges  against  Melyn  and 
Kuyter  for  libel  and  for  inducing  the  rest  of  "  the  Eight  Men  " 
to  join  in  a  false  statement  to  the  West  India  Company. 
Small  grace  was  allowed  to  the  accused  men  by  Stuyvesant. 
They  were  ordered  to  file  their  answer  to  the  charges  within 
twenty-four  hours.  A  small  extension  of  time  must  have 
been  granted  to  them,  however,  for  their  answer  bears  date 
June  22,  1647.  In  this  document  they  boldly  reiterate  the 
charges,  and  offer  to  bring  forward  the  four  survivors  of  the 
"  Board  of  Eight  Men,"  to  testify  that  as  a  matter  of  fact 
they  had  signed  the  charges  against  Kieft  of  their  own  will, 
and  not  through  any  influence  of  the  persons  accused.  In 
reply  to  Kieft's  demand  that  they  should  be  sent  to  the  Neth- 
erlands "  as  pests  and  seditious  persons,"  they  aver  their  wil- 
lingness to  go  there  "as  good  patriots  and  proprietors  in  New 
Netherland."  Stuyvesant's  previous  conduct  had  taught  them 
what  they  had  to  expect  from  him,  and  they  made  no  attempt 
to  conciliate  him ;  on  the  contrary,  their  answer  contains  a 
most  cutting  as  well  as  just  allusion  to  "  the  meanness  and 
cowardice  of  those  in  authority  who  insult  those  who  dare 
not  answer  them."  They  had  undoubtedly  determined,  in 
anticipation  of  Stuyvesant's  decision,  to  carry  their  cause 
before  the  States-General  of  the  Netherlands. 

The  decision  of  Stuyvesant  and  his  Council  was  not  long 
delayed.  On  the  25th  of  July,  1647,  Jochem  Pietersen  Kuy- 
ter, one  of  whose  atrocious  acts  consisted  in  "raising  his 
finger  in  a  threatening  manner  "  to  Kieft,  was  sentenced  to 
three  years'  banishment  and  a  fine  of  150  guilders ;  while 
Melyn  was  found  guilty  of  an  assortment  of  crimes,  embrac- 
ing treason,  bearing  false  witness,  and  libel  and  defamation ; 
he  was  sentenced  to  seven  years'  banishment  and  a  fine  of 


112       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


800  guilders ;  Stuyvesant  was  exceedingly  loath  to  let  Melyn 
escape  out  of  his  clutches,  and  pleaded  hard  in  the  Council 
for  a  sentence  of  death  upon  him,  citing  in  support  of  his 
views  many  pedantic  quotations  from  the  Hebrew  and  Roman 
Law ;  but  the  Council,  though  disposed  to  be  sufficiently  ob- 
sequious, could  not  be  brought  to  vote  for  the  death  penalty. 
Stuyvesant,  in  fact,  seems  to  have  had  some  forebodings  of 
future  trouble  from  Melyn  and  Kuyter,  but  as  they  could  not 
be  legally  put  to  death,  and  as  it  would  have  been  a  constant 
source  of  danger  to  have  kept  them  in  confinement  in  New 
Amsterdam,  where  they  were  both  very  popular,  he  had  to 
let  them  go,  contenting  himself  with  malignantly  observing 
to  Melyn,  "  If  I  were  persuaded  you  would  appeal  from  my 
sentences,  or  divulge  them,  I  would  have  your  head  cut  off, 
or  have  you  hanged  on  the  highest  tree  in  New  Netherland." 

Did  these  things  bring  to  the  mind  of  Cornells  Melyn  the 
statue  of  Alva  at  Antwerp  with  his  foot  upon  the  necks  of 
the  Estates  of  Flanders  ?  It  was  an  old  story !  This  petty 
despot  in  the  fort  at  New  Amsterdam  only  showed  the  same 
traits,  upon  his  small  stage,  as  the  tyrants  whom  the  men  of 
the  Low  Countries  had  fought  for  generations  upon  a  larger 
field.  Stuyvesant 's  notions  of  authority  were  only  those  of 
the  Count  of  Flanders  : 

"  The  Lion  stirred  and  awoke  with  a  snort, 
And  he  swelled  with  rage  till  his  breath  came  short : 
'  Ere  the  brown  leaf  meet  with  the  flake  of  snow 
On  the  roundabout  stair,  to  Ghent  I  '11  go. 

u  1  For  a  little  bird  sang,  and  I  dreamed  as  well, 
That  the  men  of  Ghent  were  as  false  as  hell ; 
Coming  by  stealth  when  naught  I  feared, 
They  trod  on  my  toes  and  pulled  my  beard.' 

"  Ere  a  snowflake  fell,  the  Lion  he  went, 
And  he  roared  a  roar  at  the  Gates  of  Ghent ; 
The  gates  they  shook,  though  they  were  fast  barred, 
And  the  warders  heard  it  at  Oudenarde. 

"  At  the  very  first  roar,  ten  thousand  men 
Fell  sick  to  death ;  he  roared  again, 
And  the  blood  of  twenty  thousand  flowed 
By  the  bridge  of  Roone,  as  broad  as  the  road. 


MELYN  AND  KUYTER  SAIL 


113 


M  "Wo  worth  thee,  Ghent !  if  having  heard 
The  first  and  second,  thou  bidest  the  third. 
Flat  stones  and  awry,  grass,  potsherd,  and  shard,  — 
Thy  place  shall  be  like  an  old  churchyard." 

Only  about  three  weeks  remained  for  Melyn  and  Kuyter 
to  settle  their  affairs,  to  make  ready  such  documents  as  they 
could  with  safety,  to  lay  before  the  States-General  upon  the 
appeal  which  they  had  determined  to  make,  and  to  prepare 
for  their  long  absence,  if  unsuccessful  in  their  endeavors. 
The  ship  "  Princess,"  upon  which  they  must  depart,  lay  in  the 
harbor  taking  in  her  cargo,  and  was  announced  to  sail  about 
the  middle  of  August.  The  intervening  time  doubtless  wit- 
nessed many  long  and  earnest  consultations  at  the  two  small 
houses  between  u  the  ditch "  and  the  river  shore.  On  the 
11th  of  July  of  this  year,  1647,  Melyn  had  made  a  deed 
(probably  in  anticipation  of  the  storm  which  was  brewing)  of 
his  house  in  the  present  Broad  Street  to  his  eldest  daughter, 
Cornelia,  who  on  April  30  of  the  same  year  had  married  Cap- 
tain Jacob  Loper,  a  Swede  of  Stockholm  by  birth,  but  who 
for  some  time  had  held  a  naval  appointment  in  the  Dutch 
service. 

Finally,  on  the  17th  of  August,  1617,  Melyn  and  Kuyter, 
together  with  Kieft,  Dominie  Bogardus,  and  several  other 
prominent  characters  of  New  Amsterdam,  sailed  from  that 
town  as  previously  mentioned,1  on  the  fatal  voyage  of  the 
"  Princess,"  Melyn  being  accompanied  by  a  young  son.  The 
voyage  could  not  have  been  marked  by  much  cordiality  be- 
tween the  ex-Director-General  and  the  men  whom  he  had 
harassed  by  his  prosecutions ;  but  when  the  "  Princess " 
struck  upon  the  rocks  near  Swansea,  the  near  approach  of 
death  seems  to  have  had  an  illuminating  effect  upon  the 
mind  of  Kieft:  "Friends,"  he  said,  with  a  sigh,  to  Kuyter 
and  Melyn,  "  I  have  been  unjust  towards  you ;  can  you  for- 
give me  ?  " 

Cornells  Melyn  was  one  of  the  few  who  escaped  death  in 
the  shipwreck,  but  his  son  was  drowned.    As  for  Kuyter,  he 

1  See  ante,  page  27. 
8 


114       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


told  how  he  had  lashed  himself  to  a  portion  of  the  after  deck 
of  the  vessel,  and  how  when  the  first  dim  light  broke  after 
that  night  of  horror,  he  had  discovered  himself  to  be  alone 
upon  the  floating  fragment,  except  for  what  he  took  to  be 
another  person  likewise  lashed  fast.  Speaking,  and  receiving 
no  answer,  he  concluded  that  the  man  was  dead;  it  turned 
out  to  be  a  cannon,  which  with  the  wreck  and  Kuyter  was 
thrown  by  the  violent  surf  upon  the  beach,  where,  breaking 
from  its  lashings  it  was  found,  —  to  their  utmost  amazement, 
—  by  the  miners  of  Glamorgan  and  Caermarthen  shires,  who 
crowded  to  the  spot  as  soon  as  it  was  day,  and  who  afterwards 
set  up  the  cannon  as  a  memorial  of  the  wonderful  event. 

Melyn  and  Kuyter  afterwards  caused  the  sea  in  the  vicinity 
of  the  wreck  to  be  dragged  for  their  chests,  and  in  this  way 
they  were  fortunate  enough  to  recover  a  portion  of  their 
valuable  papers.  Reaching  the  Netherlands  from  England 
towards  the  close  of  the  year  1617,  they  immediately  pro- 
ceeded to  lay  their  case  before  the  States-General,  at  the 
Hague.  They  found  that  body  favorably  disposed  towards 
them ; 1  their  misfortunes  had  attracted  public  attention  to 
them  to  a  much  greater  degree  than  they  were  likely  other- 
wise to  have  received;  furthermore,  the  government  of  the 
Netherlands  was  by  no  means  averse  from  exercising  a  re- 
vision over  the  affairs  of  the  West  India  Company;  and 
the  whole  prosecution  of  the  criminal  proceedings  had  been 
disposed  of  with  such  manifest  injustice  toward  the  con- 
demned persons  that  the  States-General  acted  with  little 
delay,  and  on  the  28th  of  April,  1648,  it  issued  an  order,  in 
the  form  of  a  mandamus,  permitting  an  appeal  to  be  had  by 
Melyn  and  Kuyter  from  the  criminal  judgments  pronounced 
against  them  by  Director  Stuyvesant  and  his  Council,  order- 
ing a  suspension  of  all  proceedings  under  said  judgments, 

1  Much  more  so  than  were  the  Directors  of  the  West  India  Company,  who 
on  April  7,  1648,  wrote  to  Stuyvesant :  "  Cornelis  Melyn  is  well  known  to  us,  and 
we  shall  understand  how  to  refute  his  complaint.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that 
people  have  become  so  intimate  with  such  fellows,  when  they  ought  to  have 
given  a  good  example  to  others,"  —  referring  doubtless  to  his  supporters  in  the 
States-General. 


MANDAMUS  TO  STUYVESANT  115 


and  summoning  Stuyvesant  to  appear  before  them  to  justify 
his  acts.  Under  the  procedure  of  the  Dutch  law,  such 
orders  were  required  to  be  served  by  a  messenger  of  the 
States-General,  or  by  a  marshal  or  notary ;  but  to  avoid  the 
inconvenience  of  this  in  the  present  case,  a  special  order 
was  made  allowing  the  service  on  Stuyvesant  to  be  made  by 
any  person  whom  Melyn  and  Kuyter  might  appoint.  It  was 
arranged  that  Melyn  should  return  to  New  Amsterdam  with 
the  order  of  the  States-General,  while  Kuyter  should  remain, 
to  be  prepared  for  any  treachery  or  exertion  of  arbitrary 
power  on  the  part  of  Director- General  Stuyvesant.  In  order 
to  further  guard  against  such  danger,  Melyn  also  procured  a 
letter  of  safety  for  himself,  directed  to  Stuyvesant,  from  the 
Stadtholder  of  the  United  Provinces  personally, — William 
II.,  Prince  of  Orange,  father  of  the  great  politician  best 
known  to  us  as  William  III.,  King  of  England. 

Armed  with  these  documents,  Melyn  sailed  in  the  winter 
of  1648-49,  apparently  landing  at  Boston,  and  thence  travel- 
ling through  New  England  to  New  Amsterdam.  He  was 
naturally  exultant  at  his  victory  over  the  Director-General, 
and  seems  to  have  shown  some  lack  of  discretion,  exhibiting 
his  papers  from  the  Netherlands  in  several  places,  and  talking 
in  rather  a  high  strain.  At  New  Haven  he  met  one  of  his 
townsmen,  Eghbert  van  Borsum,  who  afterwards  made  a  de- 
position that  Melyn  had  said  "  that  the  High  and  Mighty 
Lords,  the  States  of  the  United  Netherlands,  were  greatly 
surprised  that  the  English  had  not  forcibly  dragged  Director 
Stuyvesant  out  of  the  Fort,  and  hung  him  on  the  highest 
tree;  also  that  he  had  brought  Kieft  to  his  grave  and 
that  he  would  bring  Stuyvesant  also  there :  "  there  was  other 
talk,  according  to  the  informant,  but  he  went  away,  "  so  that 
he  might  no  longer  listen  to  the  prattle." 

Upon  his  arrival  at  New  Amsterdam  in  March,  1649, 
Melyn  took  care  to  revenge  himself  upon  the  Director- 
General  for  the  insults  he  had  previously  received  from  him 
by  having  as  many  of  the  citizens  of  New  Amsterdam  as  he 
could  get  together  present  to  witness  the  mortification  of  that 


116       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


official  when  the  order  of  the  States-General  was  served  upon 
him :  he  even  attempted  to  lengthen  out  the  torture  of  his 
arbitrary  and  crestfallen  opponent  by  reading  aloud  to  him 
the  contents  of  the  document,  but  this  Stuyvesant  prevented 
by  angrily  snatching  the  paper  from  him,  —  no  doubt  to  the 
great  delight  of  the  crowd;  he,  however,  sullenly  announced 
his  intention  of  respecting  the  orders  of  the  Prince  of  Orange 
and  of  the  States- General. 

In  the  mean  time,  encouraged  by  the  results  of  the  applica- 
tion of  Melyn  and  Kuyter  to  the  States-General,  the  jurist 
Adriaen  van  der  Donck,  in  conjunction  with  several  other 
opponents  of  the  administration  at  New  Amsterdam,  pre- 
pared in  July,  1619,  the  historic  document  known  as  "  The 
Remonstrance  of  New  Netherland."  This  vigorous  paper, 
attacking  the  whole  policy  of  the  West  India  Company  in 
relation  to  its  colony  of  New  Netherland,  was  carried  over  to 
the  Fatherland  by  a  deputation  including  Van  der  Donck 
and  Melyn.  Their  departure  was  hastened  by  the  fact  that 
the  Director-General  had  quietly  sent  over  the  Secretary  Van 
Tienhoven  to  represent  him  before  the  States-General.  The 
Secretary  probably  carried  with  him  a  letter  from  Stuyvesant 
to  that  body,  bearing  date  Aug.  10, 1649,  ostensibly  for  the  pur- 
pose of  acknowledging  the  receipt  of  their  mandamus,  but  in 
reality  filled  with  insinuations  against  Cornells  Melyn.  Two 
weeks  after  the  departure  of  Van  Tienhoven  the  deputation 
sailed,  —  probably  by  the  next  vessel,  —  and  for  the  second 
time  Melyn  watched  the  house  of  his  family  near  the  East 
River  shore  fade  away  in  the  distance  ;  he  left  them  behind 
him,  to  be  subjected  to  various  petty  annoyances  from  the 
Director-General.  In  the  summer  of  the  year  1649,  Melyn's 
son-in-law,  Captain  Loper,  applied  for  permission  to  trade  in 
the  South  or  Delaware  River,  but  although  the  Council  was 
in  favor  of  granting  the  application,  Stuyvesant  sullenly  re- 
fused to  do  so,  giving  no  other  reason  than  that  he  had  re- 
ceived express  orders  from  his  superiors  "  to  keep  an  eye  on 
Cornells  Melyn."  "  We  wish,"  says  Janneken,  the  wife 
of  Cornells  Melyn,  in  a  letter  to  her  husband,  dated  December 


DELAYS  IN  THE  NETHERLANDS 


117 


17,  1649,  "  that  God  would  be  pleased  to  send  the  delegates 
back  quickly,  with  business  accomplished,  for  here  matters 
continue  so  bad  as  to  excite  murmurs  against  Heaven." 

Matters,  however,  did  not  move  quickly;  the  management 
and  even  the  future  existence  of  the  West  India  Company 
itself  were  now  in  question  before  the  States- General,  and 
although  that  corporation  had  much  declined  from  its  former 
power,  it  had  still  sufficient  resources  to  make  a  vigorous 
finrht  in  its  own  behalf  and  in  that  of  its  officers.    To  the 

o 

charges  made  by  Van  der  Donck,  Melyn,  and  others,  it  sent 
to  the  States-General  on  the  27th  of  January,  1650,  an 
answer  couched  in  bitter  terms  against  the  petitioners.1 
Following  the  practice  adopted  b}^  the  States-General,  all 
matters  relating  in  any  way  to  the  West  India  Company 
were  referred,  in  the  first  instance,  to  a  standing  committee 
upon  the  affairs  of  that  body,  there  sometimes  to  slumber 
a  long  while.  Melyn  seems  to  have  become  wearied  of  the 
delays,  and  on  the  8th  of  February,  1650,  he  complains  to 
the  States-General  that  owing  to  the  absence  from  New 
Amsterdam  of  the  Secretary,  and  to  the  obstacles  thrown  in 
his  way  by  the  authorities  at  that  place,  he  has  been  unable 
to  obtain  certain  papers  necessary  for  his  suit ;  and  he  prays 
that  august  body  to  take  into  consideration  the  fact  that  he 
"  hath  now  groped  such  a  length  of  time,  since  the  year  1643, 
in  this  labyrinth,  without  any  error  or  fault  of  his,  for  the 
advancement  of  the  public  interests." 

The  records  which  are  accessible  fail  to  show  the  final  re- 
sult of  the  appeal  of  Melyn  and  Kuyter  to  the  States- General 
from  Stuyvesant's  arbitrary  judgments,  but  whether  these  were 
finally  overturned  or  not,  no  further  molestation  to  those  per- 
sons appears  to  have  ever  taken  place  by  reason  of  them,  and 
both  Kuyter  and  Melyn  were  now  anxious  to  return  to  New 
Netherland  and  to  take  advantage  of  the  quiet  now  prevailing 
with  the  Indians,  to  restore  their  wasted  plantations. 

1  The  malignant  disposition  of  the  officers  of  the  West  India  Company  towards 
Melyn,  Kuyter,  and  Van  der  Donck,  —  especially  towards  Melyn,  —  are  shown  in 
almost  every  letter  sent  by  them  to  New  Netherland  about  this  time. 


118 


NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


In  his  long  sojourn  at  the  Hague,  Cornelis  Melyn  had  been 
frequently  brought  into  contact  with  a  person  of  some  note 
in  the  government  at  that  period.  It  has  been  already  stated 
that  the  papers  relating  to  the  affairs  of  the  West  India  Com- 
pany which  were  presented  to  the  States- General  were  re- 
ferred in  the  first  instance  to  a  standing  committee  of  that 
body.  At  the  head  of  this  committee  was  Henryk  van  der 
Capellen :  this  gentleman  was  a  deputy  to  the  States-General 
from  the  county  of  Zutphen,  and  was  a  member  of  the  Dutch 
nobility,  being  Lord  of  Esselt  and  Hasselt,  near  the  east  shore 
of  the  Zuyder  Zee.  Pie  is  frequently  spoken  of  in  the  docu- 
ments relating  to  New  Netherland  by  his  title  of  Baron  van  der 
Capellen  tho  Ryssel,  and  was  a  man  of  independent  fortune.1 
The  Baron  van  der  Capellen  appears  to  have  taken  a  lively 
interest  in  the  affairs  of  Cornelis  Melyn,  and  not  only  did  he 
forward  the  interests  of  the  latter  in  the  reports  of  his  com- 
mittee to  the  States-General,  but  he  finally  entered  into  an 
agreement  with  him  for  the  improvement  and  development  of 
his  Staten  Island  manor,  or  rather  patroonship,  in  which 
Van  der  Capellen  purchased  an  interest. 

The  associates  now  made  active  preparations  for  carrying 
on  the  work  of  improvement.  Van  der  Capellen  purchased, 
in  the  summer  of  1650,  a  ship  called  Nieuw  Nederlandsche 
Fortuy n,  —  The  Fortune  of  New  Netherland,  —  which  he 
designed  to  send  over  to  his  colony ;  the  vessel  sailed  for  New 
Amsterdam  in  the  fall  or  winter  of  that  year,  carrying  a 
superintendent,  carpenter,  seven  farmers,  and  a  company  of 

1  In  an  interesting  communication  respecting  the  ancient  Van  der  Capellen 
family,  Mr.  Arnold  J.  F.  van  Laer,  of  the  manuscript  department  in  the  State 
Library  at  Albany  and  formerly  of  Utrecht  in  the  Netherlands,  observes  :  "  This 
is  one  of  our  prominent  historic  families,  having  played  an  important  part  in 
the  eighty  years'  war  with  Spain.  They  were  originally  from  France,  where  they 
received,  as  early  as  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries,  favors  from  the  court ;  and 
the  house,  in  which  the  title  of  baron  has  been  used  for  centuries,  is  to  this  day 
closely  allied  with  the  oldest  families  in  the  country."  Henryk  van  der  Capellen, 
referred  to  in  the  text,  is  understood  to  have  died  in  1659,  leaving  no  descendants ; 
it  is  uncertain  whether  his  Staten  Island  estate  was  surrendered  to  the  West 
India  Company,  or  whether  it  was  confiscated  by  the  English,  in  the  hands  of 
his  collateral  heirs  in  1664,  as  being  the  property  of  subjects  of  the  Netherlands. 


STUYVESANT  CONFISCATES  "FORTUNE "  119 


seventy  persons  in  all,  with  their  necessary  equipment,  for 
the  colony.  With  them  returned  Cornelis  Melyn,  who  on  the 
preceding  July  1  had  received  from  the  States-General  let- 
ters of  protection  against  his  inveterate  enemy  Stuyvesant.1 

The  ship  "  Fortune,"  forced  by  stress  of  weather,  touched  at 
the  Rhode  Island  Colony,  and  thence  pursued  her  voyage  to 
New  Amsterdam ;  by  this  deviation  from  her  course,  she  had, 
it  was  claimed,  infringed  upon  some  of  the  customs  regula- 
tions; and  the  Director-General  grasped  with  avidity  the 
opportunity  of  revenging  himself  upon  Cornelis  Melyn,  whom 

1  It  may  not  be  out  of  place  here  to  give  some  account  of  the  further  progress 
of  the  proceedings  before  the  States-General  against  Director- General  Stuyvesant 
and  the  West  India  Company,  in  the  investigation  sought  for  by  Adriaen  van  der 
Donck  and  his  associates  in  the  "Remonstrance"  of  1649.  On  the  9th  of  August, 
1650,  the  committee  of  the  States-General  reported  that  the  matters  alleged 
ought  to  be  inquired  into,  and  that  Cornelis  van  Tienhoven,  Stuyvesant's  secre- 
tary and  representative,  then  in  the  Netherlands,  should  be  examined  upon  inter- 
rogatories. That  wily  individual,  after  having  upon  the  29th  of  November, 
1650,  delivered  a  scurrilous  reply  to  the  "Remonstrance,"  managed  to  evade 
an  examination  till  the  latter  part  of  the  winter  of  1650-51,  when  it  was  found 
that  he  was  preparing  to  return  to  New  Amsterdam.  Thereupon  the  States- 
General,  on  February  7,  1651,  made  an  order  that  he  should  not  leave  the  country 
till  he  had  auswered  certain  prepared  interrogatories ;  and  on  March  14  a 
further  order  was  served  upon  him  and  Jan  Jansen  Damen,  his  father-in-law, 
who  had  accompanied  him  from  New  Amsterdam  as  Stuyvesant's  private  agent, 
to  appear  for  examination  before  the  legislative  body.  The  parties  concerned, 
well  assured  of  the  backing  of  the  West  India  Company,  coolly  set  at  defiance 
the  mandate  of  the  States-General.  Jan  Damen,  bearing  with  him  a  deed  from 
the  West  India  Company  to  himself,  as  agent  for  Tetrus  Stuyvesant,  of  "  the 
company's  great  bouwery"  (well  known  for  nearly  two  hundred  years  as  the 
Stuyvesant  Farm,  on  Manhattan  Island),  which  deed  bore  date  March  12,  1651, 
immediately  sailed  for  New  Amsterdam,  as  the  secretary  of  the  company  calmly 
notified  the  States-General,  on  the  21st  of  that  month.  Much  irritated,  the 
States-General  now  ordered  the  Amsterdam  Chamber  of  the  West  India  Com- 
pany not  to  allow  Van  Tienhoven  to  leave  Amsterdam,  and  to  notify  the  skipper 
of  their  ship  "  Waterhont,"  by  which  he  was  preparing  to  depart,  not  to  receive 
him  till  he  had  obtained  their  permit.  This  order  was  treated  with  the  same 
contempt  as  the  former  one,  and  on  May  5,  Van  Tienhoven  set  sail  for  New 
Amsterdam.  The  matter  appears  to  have  now  been  allowed  to  drop.  That 
such  disregard  of  the  authority  of  the  States-General  was  suffered,  appears  to 
have  been  partly  owing  to  the  dislike  of  the  States-General  to  interfere  in 
provincial  matters,  partly  owing  to  the  ill-defined  limits  of  its  authority,  and 
partly  owing  to  the  inexpediency  of  exciting  hostile  feelings  or  dissensions  in  the 
then  threatening  state  of  affairs  between  the  United  Provinces  and  England. 


120       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


he  affected  to  consider  as  a  concealed  partner  in  the  enter- 
prise. He  proceeded  in  the  most  arbitrary  manner ;  the  crew 
of  the  "  Fortune  "  were  arrested  and  thrown  into  prison,  and 
the  vessel  was  condemned  and  sold.  Stuyvesant  had,  however, 
in  this  matter,  attacked  a  person  who  was  too  influential  to  be 
assailed  thus  with  impunity.  The  Baron  van  der  Capellen 
immediately  instituted  proceedings  before  the  States-General 
against  the  West  India  Company  for  the  illegal  seizure  of  his 
vessel ;  he  was  awarded  heavy  damages,  and  the  Company 
had  to  pay  roundly  for  the  privilege  of  maintaining  their 
despotic  servant  in  his  office  at  New  Amsterdam. 

As  for  Melyn  himself,  we  do  not  find  that  he  actually  came 
in  person  at  this  time  into  the  clutches  of  Stuyvesant,  and 
there  is  reason  to  believe  that  instead  of  coming  up  to  the 
town  on  the  incoming  vessel,  he  landed  at  his  "  manor  "  upon 
Staten  Island.  The  men  of  Melyn's  colony,  and  those  of  his 
partner,  Van  der  Capellen,  must  have  made  quite  a  consider- 
able force,  and  Stuyvesant  does  not  appear  to  have  considered 
it  advisable  to  make  any  hostile  incursion  against  him.1  His 
property  in  New  Amsterdam,  however,  embracing  what  re- 
mained of  his  purchases  of  1644,  and  extending  along  the 
river  shore  from  near  the  present  Broad  Street  to  the  City 
Tavern,  at  the  head  of  the  present  Coenties  Slip,  was  confis- 
cated by  Stuyvesant's  orders.  A  portion  of  it,  adjoining  the 
tavern,  was  added  to  the  ground  of  that  establishment,  and 
the  remainder  was  divided  into  four  parcels  extending  from 
"  the  road,"  or  the  present  Stone  Street,  to  the  river  shore, 
and  these  were  granted  to  various  persons  in  September,  1651. 

Cornells  Melyn  now  continued  to  reside  for  several  years 
upon  his  Staten  Island  estate,  not  venturing,  according  to 
statements  made  by  some  of  his  contemporaries,  to  set  his  foot 
in  New  Amsterdam.  His  neighbor  and  friend,  J ochem  Pieter- 
sen  Kuyter,  had  made  his  peace  with  Stuyvesant,  whom  with 
two  others  he  had  admitted  in  1651  into  joint  ownership  with 

1  Melyn  is  also  stated  to  have  kept,  at  this  time,  a  large  number  of  Indians 
—  more  than  a  hundred  in  fact  —  in  his  service.  As  these  statements  come  from 
his  enemies,  however,  they  must  be  accepted  with  caution. 


IMPRISONMENT  OF  MELYN 


121 


himself  in  his  plantation  on  the  Harlem  flats,  where  he  was 
now  actively  engaged  in  restoring  his  impaired  fortunes  ;  but 
in  1654  he  was  murdered  by  the  Indians  at  Harlem.  Kuy- 
ter's  widow  soon  married  Willem  Jansen,  the  farmer  or  super- 
intendent of  the  Harlem  plantation,  but  during  the  Indian 
outbreak  in  the  fall  of  1655  she  too  was  killed  by  the  natives. 
Kuyter  left  no  children,  and  his  small  house  at  the  corner  of 
Broad  and  Pearl  streets  stood  for  several  years  vacant  and 
ownerless,  a  melancholy  memorial  of  the  Indian  troubles. 
Finally,  the  crumbling  away  of  the  river-bank  in  front  of  it 
led  to  action  by  the  magistrates,  and  a  "  curator "  was  ap- 
pointed, who,  on  January  12,  1658,  sold  the  house  at  public 
auction  to  Hendrick  Jansen  Vandervin. 

As  for  Cornells  Melyn,  we  find  that  in  the  summer  of 
1655  he  was  a  prisoner  in  New  Amsterdam ;  but  of  the  cir- 
cumstances leading  to  this  imprisonment,  we  have  no  informa- 
tion. On  the  31st  of  August  of  that  year,  upon  a  petition  of 
Melyn's  wife,  asking  that  her  husband  might  be  removed  to  a 
more  convenient  place,  "  on  account  of  his  sore  leg,"  the 
Council  made  an  order  that  she  might  be  permitted  to  remove 
him  to  a  more  convenient  place,  "  in  the  City  Hall,  or  else- 
where," on  condition  that  he  should  furnish  bail.  At  this 
very  time,  Director-General  Stuyvesant  was  busy  in  fitting 
out  the  force  with  which,  on  the  5th  of  September  of  this 
year,  he  started  against  the  Swedes  on  the  Delaware ;  and  it 
is  difficult  to  avoid  the  suspicion  that  he  had  availed  himself 
of  his  military  preparations  for  the  purpose  of  getting  his  old 
adversary  into  his  power. 

However  this  may  be,  Melyn  must  have  soon  returned  to 
his  colony  upon  Staten  Island,  for  there,  in  the  course  of  the 
Indian  hostilities  which  followed  the  outbreak  of  September  15, 
1655,  at  New  Amsterdam,  he  and  several  members  of  his 
family  were  made  captives  by  the  Indians,  and  his  plantation 
was  again  destroyed.  This  misfortune  was  the  ruin  of 
Melyn's  prospects  upon  Staten  Island,  which  was  left  by  the 
natives,  according  to  the  report  of  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven, 
"without  an  inhabitant  or  a  house."    The  Indians,  upon 


122       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


this  occasion,  seem,  as  a  rule,  to  have  treated  their  prisoners 
without  much  harshness,  and  soon  delivered  them  up  for  a 
moderate  ransom. 

No  further  particulars  respecting  the  prosecution  of  Cor- 
nells Melyn  by  the  New  Amsterdam  authorities  have  come 
to  our  notice,  but  it  is  evident  that  he  soon  abandoned  the 
colony.  In  the  early  part  of  1657,  he  and  his  son  Jacob,  hav- 
ing repaired  to  New  Haven,  there  took  the  oath  of  allegiance 
to  the  English  government.  He  subsequently  went  again  to 
the  Netherlands,  and  there,  in  June,  1659,  for  the  sum  of 
1500  guilders,  he  surrendered  his  patroonship  of  Staten  Island 
to  the  West  India  Company.  After  the  fall  of  Stuyvesant 
and  the  capitulation  to  the  English  in  1664,  Jacob  Melyn 
returned  to  New  York,  and  resided  there  for  a  number  of 
years.  His  father,  Cornells  Melyn,  was  still  residing  in  New 
Haven  in  1662,  but  the  time  of  his  death  is  uncertain. 

The  remaining  members  of  Cornells  Melyn's  family  seem 
to  have  still  resided  at  the  house  in  the  easterly  half  of  the 
present  Broad  Street,  which,  in  1647,  he  had  given  to  his 
daughter  Cornelia:  her  first  husband,  Captain  Jacob  Loper, 
had  died  prior  to  1653,  and  she  married  in  that  year  Jacob 
Schellinger,  a  merchant  of  Amsterdam,  who  was  carrying  on 
business  in  New  Netherland,  and  who,  after  the  retirement  of 
Cornells  Melyn,  became  the  mainstay  of  the  family.  Jan- 
netje,  the  wife  of  Melyn,  and  his  daughter  Cornelia  and  her 
husband  were  for  several  years  engaged  in  frequent  litiga- 
tions with  Captain  Adriaen  Pos,  the  agent  of  Melyn's  co- 
partner, the  Baron  van  der  Capellen,  respecting  the  division 
of  the  Staten  Island  property,  and  the  settlement  of  various 
conflicting  claims  in  connection  therewith;  but  it  does  not 
appear  that  Cornells  Melyn,  for  the  space  of  nearly  five  years, 
again  set  foot  in  New  Amsterdam,  to  encounter  his  old  enemy, 
Director-General  Stuyvesant,  — "  a  tyrant,  as  we  have  now 
and  then  been  accused  by  the  ignorant,"  as  he  complacently 
remarks  of  himself.  Melyn  was  certainly  in  New  Amster- 
dam in  1661,  however,  no  doubt  protected  by  his  English 
citizenship. 


THE  MELYN  HOUSE  REMOVED  123 


The  Melyn  house  in  Broad  Street  did  not  remain  long  in 
existence  after  its  builder  had  quitted  it.  After  the  Indian 
troubles  of  1655  had  in  some  measure  subsided,  it  was  de- 
cided to  open  up  and  to  regulate  several  streets,  in  order  to 
afford  accommodation  to  the  increasing  number  of  those  who 
desired  to  build  in  the  town.  One  of  the  changes  proposed 
in  the  early  part  of  1656  was  to  widen  and  deepen  "  The 
Ditch,"  so  as  to  form  a  canal  navigable  for  small  boats,  with 
a  sufficient  roadway  on  each  side  of  it ;  this,  when  completed 
by  sheathing  the  sides  of  the  canal  with  planks,  formed  the 
well-known  Heere  Graft,  which  covered  the  site  of  the  pres- 
ent Broad  Street,  and  which  was  a  reminder,  in  a  humble 
way,  of  the  Heere  Graft  in  Amsterdam.1 

To  carry  out  this  work,  it  became  necessary  to  remove  the 
house  of  the  Melyn  family,  and  in  June,  1656,  Jacob  Schel- 
lingcr,  Melyn's  son-in-law,  was  notified  not  to  proceed  with 
the  rest  of  his  immediate  neighbors  in  the  construction  of 
sheet-piling  along  their  respective  water-fronts,  "  as  his  house 
lies  in  the  canal  and  on  the  road."  A  year  or  two  afterwards 
it  was  demolished,  and  there  was  given  by  the  burgomasters 
to  the  Melyn  family,  in  partial  compensation,  a  small  lot  of 
ground,  only  about  eighteen  feet  square,  at  the  southeast 
corner  of  Hoogh  Straet  (present  Stone  Street)  and  the  Graft ; 
this  lot  had  been  gained  by  the  straightening  of  Hoogh  Straet 
which  took  place  about  this  time,  the  western  end  of  that 
street  being  shifted  some  twenty  or  twenty-five  feet  north- 
wards, in  order  to  make  it  connect  more  nearly  with  Brouwer 

1  The  Heere  Graft  (or  modern  Gracht)  of  Amsterdam,  of  which  a  view  is  given 
in  this  work,  is  a  canal,  which  with  its  bordering  passageways  is  about  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  English  feet  in  breadth.  Beginning  and  ending  at  or  very  near 
the  Port,  sometimes  called,  not  very  correctly,  the  River  Y,  it  extends  in  a  semi- 
elliptical  curve  around  a  considerable  section  of  the  city.  A  large  portion  of 
the  Graft  was  constructed  from  about  1610  to  1615,  and  in  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century  it  formed  the  boundary  of  the  city  to  the  eastward,  though 
a  large  extent  of  buildings  had  grown  up  to  the  west  of  it.  The  Heere  Graft 
soon  became  one  of  the  principal  thoroughfares  of  Amsterdam,  and  (though 
containing  no  public  buildings  of  much  note),  it  soon  came  to  be  a  favorite 
residence  of  the  principal  merchants,  bankers,  and  others  of  the  wealthier  portion 
of  the  community. 


124       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Straet  (or  the  present  Stone  Street,  west  of  Broad)  ;  an 
inspection  of  the  locality  will  show  that  the  lines  of  these 
streets  are  not  continuous  at  the  present  time.  Here  the 
Melyns  built  their  second  dwelling,  a  small  brick  house,  and 
here  some  of  them  resided  for  many  years.  Nominally,  the 
property  belonged  to  the  infant  children  of  Captain  Jacob 
Loper  and  of  Cornelia  Melyn,1  but  it  soon  passed  into  the 
hands  of  other  members  of  the  family. 

On  May  27,  1684,  after  Jannetje,  the  widow  of  Cornells 
Melyn,  had  closed  her  eventful  and  troubled  life,  her  eldest 
son  Jacob  received  a  conveyance  of  this  property  through  the 
administrators  of  his  mother's  estate.  He  did  not  remain  per- 
manently in  New  York,  but  was  engaged  in  the  business  of  a 
leather-dresser  in  Boston  ;  and  in  May,  1697,  he  sold  the  house 
for  £360  to  William  Bickley,  a  merchant  of  the  city,  who  had 
previously  resided  in  it  for  some  time  as  a  tenant.  It  is  a 
curious  fact  that  this  small  plot  of  ground  has  retained  its 
dimensions  through  the  vicissitudes  of  nearly  two  centuries 
and  a  half,  and  is  to-day  occupied  by  a  small  and  somewhat 
dingy  brick  building  with  a  wealth  of  rusty  iron  fire-escapes ; 
it  appears  to  have  stoutly  resisted  absorption  by  the  more 
imposing  structure  whose  blank  walls  of  yellow  brick  over- 
tower  it  on  two  sides. 

Just  south  of  this  house,  along  the  present  Broad  Street, 
was  a  small  space  of  ground  which  belonged  to  the  Melyn 
family,  and  which  became  available  for  building  purposes 
when  the  Heere  Graft  was  opened  and  regulated,  in  1657 
or  thereabouts.  Here,  at  a  date  unknown,  but  doubtless 
within  three  or  four  years  after  the  period  last  mentioned, 
a  cottage  was  built  which  was  afterwards  occupied  for  many 
years  by  Isaac  Melyn,  a  younger  son  of  Cornells.  Isaac 
Melyn  appears  to  have  been  engaged  in  shipping  ventures 
as  early  as  1672 :  he  was  at  that  time  owner  or  master  of 

1  The  record  of  baptisms  in  the  Dutch  Church  contains  the  names  of  two  of 
the  children  of  Captain  Loper;  namely,  Jacobus,  October  25,  1648,  and  Janne- 
ken,  October  30,  1650.  The  daughter  Janneken  married,  October  9,  167-1,  Joris 
Davidson  of  Albany  :  as  to  the  son,  see  Appendix  II.  to  this  volume. 


View  of  tiif  Southeast  Corner  of  Broad  and  Stone  Streets. 

Showing  the  sites  of  the  later  "  Mclyn  House  "  and  that  of 
the  poet  Jacob  Steendam. 


SIBOUT  CLAESSEN 


125 


the  ship  "  Expectation,"  and  having  a  controversy  with  some 
freighters  respecting  damage  occasioned  by  a  leak,  he  received 
the  permission  of  the  Governor  and  Council  to  have  the 
cargo  unloaded  and  examined  by  arbitrators.  The  Broad 
Street  premises  were  sold  in  1722  by  Joanna,  the  wife  of 
Jonathan  Dickinson  of  Elizabethtown,  New  Jersey,  who  was 
the  only  surviving  child  of  Isaac  Melyn,  to  William  Yer- 
planck,  a  merchant  of  New  York.1 

At  the  time  of  our  survey  of  New  Amsterdam  in  1655,  a 
dwelling-house  had  been  recently  built  on  the  south  side  of 
Hoogh  Straet,  immediately  east  of  the  spot  upon  which  the 
later,  or  second,  Melyn  house  was,  within  a  year  or  two 
afterwards  erected ;  its  site  is  at  present  covered  by  the 
northerly  end  of  the  large  building  which  encloses  two  sides 
of  the  small  Melyn  plot,  above  described.2  The  lot  upon 
which  this  dwelling-house  stood  had  been  sold  by  Cornelis 
Melyn,  soon  after  his  return  from  the  Netherlands,  in  the 
early  part  of  1651,  to  Sibout  Claessen,  a  carpenter  by  trade, 
from  the  ancient  town  of  Hoorn,  then  a  famous  seaport 
upon  the  Zuyder  Zee,  some  sixteen  or  eighteen  miles  north 
of  Amsterdam.  As  Director  Stuyvesant  had,  at  this  time, 
caused  proceedings  to  be  instituted  against  Melyn  for  an 
alleged  infringement  of  the  revenue  laws,  under  which  pro- 
ceedings the  balance  of  his  land  along  the  East  River  shore 
was  afterwards  confiscated  as  above  suited,3  he  apparently 
refused  to  recognize  the  validity  of  Melyn's  transfer  to 
Claessen,  and  would  not  allow  any  deed  of  the  property  to 
be  registered.  Claessen,  however,  not  only  maintained  pos- 
session of  the  premises,  but  thriftily  endeavored  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  the  irregularity,  by  refusing  to  pay  Melyn  the 
price  agreed  upon.  Stuyvesant's  persecutions  seem  to  have 
deterred  Melyn  for  some  years  from  prosecuting  his  demand 
for  the  purchase-money,  and  when  he  finally  sued  Claessen 


1  For  further  details  respecting  the  family  of  Cornelis  Melyn,  see  Appendix 
II.  to  this  volume. 

2  See  ante,  page  124.  8  See  ante,  page  120. 


126       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


before  the  Court  of  the  Burgomasters,  the  cause  languished 
along  for  several  years,  and  was  not  terminated  in  Melyn's 
favor  until  1661. 

The  rear  of  this  lot  of  Sibout  Claessen,  which  extended  to 
the  shore,  was  encroached  upon  by  the  tides  in  violent  storms  ; 
and,  for  the  purpose  of  preventing  it  from  being  washed  away, 
Claessen,  first  among  the  owners  upon  the  shore,  constructed 
a  sheet-piling  of  planks  along  the  bank  in  the  rear  of  his 
premises.  This  he  had  done  prior  to  1654,  and  upon  his 
complaint  the  other  owners,  as  far  east  as  the  present  Coenties 
Alley,  were  ordered  to  carry  out  a  similar  work  along  their 
respective  lots,  the  burgomasters  engaging  to  construct  the 
same  protection  to  the  shore  in  front  of  the  Town  House.1 

1  Sibout  Claessen  occupied  the  property  on  Hoogh  Straet  (Stone),  above  de- 
scribed, for  many  years.  He  had  no  children,  but  had  married  the  widow  of 
Aert  Teunissen,  a  farmer  at  Hoboken  who  was  killed  by  the  Indians  while  on  a 
trading  excursion  in  the  vicinity  of  Sandy  Hook,  in  the  year  1643  ;  to  her  two 
daughters  Wyntje,  the  wife  of  Simon  Barentsen,  and  Susanna,  wife  of  Rynier 
Willemsen,  girls  of  about  seventeen  and  fourteen  years  at  the  time  of  our  survey, 
Claessen  left  his  estate,  at  his  death  in  1680.  In  1646  Claessen  received  a  grant 
of  about  one  hundred  acres  of  land,  "  at  the  Hook  of  the  Hellegaat  called  Hoorn's 
Hoek."  This  was  a  headland  on  the  East  River  shore,  near  the  foot  of  the  pres- 
ent Eighty-ninth  Street,  and  the  name  is  supposed  to  have  been  given  to  it  by 
Claessen  in  remembrance  of  the  locality  of  similar  appellation,  east  of  the  entrance 
to  the  harbor  of  his  native  city  of  Hoorn.  Claessen  soon  parted  with  the  land 
upon  the  East  River,  but  the  name  was  long  familiar ;  indeed,  it  appears  upon 
a  map  published  as  late  as  1875  or  thereabouts,  in  the  corrupted  form  of 
"  Harris'  Hook." 


CHAPTER  XII 

JACOB  STEENDAM,  THE  DUTCH  POET,  AND  HIS  HOUSE.— 
HIS  POETICAL  WORKS.  -  "  DEN  DISTEL  VINK."  —  POEMS  ON 
NEW  NETHERLAND.  —  HIS  LATTER  YEARS  AT  BAT  AVI  A 

Der  Christlichen  Religion 
"War  er  von  hertzen  zugethon, 
Dieselb  zu  fiirdern  und  zu  ehren, 
Und  rechten  Gottsdienst  zu  vermehren. 

Das  ist  der  schatz  in  dieser  Welt, 
Der  ubertrifft  alls  Gut  und  Gelt, 
Welchen  der  Rost  nit  fressen  mag, 
Er  bleibt  biss  an  den  Jiingsten  Tag. 

"  Ritter  Theurdanck." 


ETWEEN  the  lot  of  Sibout  Claessen  and  the  Town 
House,  upon  the  south  side  of  the  High  Street,  lay  the 


confiscated  land  of  Cornells  Melyn.  This  (after  deducting 
a  portion,  which  was  added  to  the  grounds  of  the  Town 
House),  had  been  divided  into  four  parcels,  which  were  sold 
to  as  many  different  individuals  in  September,  1651.  Of 
these  parcels,  the  one  next  to  Claessen 's  lot  was  held  at  the 
time  of  our  survey  by  Mattheus,  or  Matthew  de  Vos,  a 
respectable  notary  of  the  town,  who  has  been  previously 
mentioned  in  these  sketches.1  In  the  year  1655  it  appears 
to  have  been  still  vacant  and  unimproved,2  but  the  next  year 
it  was  sold  to  Adolph  Pietersen,  a  house  carpenter  who 
seems  to  have  built  upon  it  and  occupied  it  as  a  residence 
for  many  years.3    Of  the  remaining  parcels  of  this  series  the 

1  See  ante,  p.  12. 

2  As,  by  the  way,  it  happens  to  be  at  the  present  time  (1900),  the  lot  being 
boarded  off  from  the  street. 

3  This  person  appears  to  have  been  also  occasionally  employed  —  possibly 
for  the  convenience  of  the  use  of  his  carpenter's  rule  —  in  measuring  off  parcels 


128       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


two  nearest  to  the  Town  Hall  were  held  in  1655,  one  by 
Sybrant  Jansen,  sometimes  called  Galma,  —  it  is  uncertain 
whether  this  was  as  yet  built  upon ;  the  other,  adjoining  the 
enclosure  of  the  Town  House,  was  owned  by  Captain  Adriaen 
Blommaert,  skipper  of  the  West  India  Company's  ship 
"New  Amsterdam;"  it  was  probably  built  upon  as  early  as 
1655,  but  the  house  seems  to  have  stood  upon  what  was 
really  the  rear  of  the  lot,  near  the  shore,  so  as  to  enjoy  the 
immediate  proximity  of  the  Town  House. 

As  for  the  intervening  parcel  of  land,  or  the  one  situated 
between  the  lot  of  Matthew  de  Vos  upon  the  west  and  that 
of  Sybrant  Jansen  upon  the  east,  it  possesses  far  more  of 
interest  and  is  in  fact  one  of  the  historic  sites  of  New 
Amsterdam.  Here  stood,  without  doubt,  the  original  house 
of  Burger  Jorissen,  the  smith,  erected  certainly  as  early  as 
1641,  and  one  of  the  first  dwelling-houses,  if  not  the  very 
first,  to  be  built  in  the  village  of  New  Amsterdam,  east  of  the 
present  Broad  Street.  Sold  to  Cornelis  Melyn  in  1644,  as 
already  stated,1  it  was  granted  in  1651  as  a  part  of  his  con- 
fiscated estate  to  Cornelis  van  Tienhoven,  the  favored  Secre- 
tary under  Director-General  Stuyvesant;  and  upon  the  12th 
of  October,  1654,  it  was  purchased  from  Van  Tienhoven  by 
Doctor  Jacob  Varrevanger  for  Jacob  Steendam,  the  Dutch 
poet,  who  resided  here  at  the  time  of  our  survey. 

The  passer-by  in  Stone  Street,  between  Broad  Street  and 
Hanover  Square,  will,  if  he  have  sufficient  leisure  to  look 
about  him,  be  quite  sure  to  have  his  attention  directed  to  a 
two  story  and  basement  brick  dwelling-house  standing  oddly 
in  the  midst  of  the  dull  warehouses  of  that  locality.  For  a 
New  York  building,  the  house  is  ancient,  —  that  is  to  say, 
it  was  probably  erected  in  the  first  or  second  decade  of  the 
nineteenth  century.    Time  has  dealt  hardly  with  the  edifice 

of  land  for  individuals.  In  this  connection  he  executed,  in  1664,  immediately- 
after  the  surrender  to  the  English,  "a  survey"  of  a  small  parcel  of  land  for 
Burger  Jorissen,  and  in  this  occurs  perhaps  the  first  use  of  the  new  name  of  the 
town  which  can  be  traced  to  private  citizens.  Pietersen's  phonetic  spelling  of 
the  name  was  "  Nu  Iarck." 
1  See  ante,  pp.  104,  105. 


STEENDAM'S  HOUSE  IN  STONE  STREET  129 


in  some  respects ;  its  brown-stone  doorsteps  and  window-sills 
are  crumbling  away,  and  its  iron  railings  are  deeply  bitten 
with  rust.  The  lower  portion  of  the  building  seems  to  be 
devoted  to  certain  mechanical  trades,  but  the  second  story 
still  displays  its  fringed  window-shades  and  linen-covered 
parlor  furniture,  as  it  may  have  done  three  quarters  of  a 
century  ago.1  It  is  no  very  violent  supposition  that  this  old 
house,  No.  26  Stone  Street,  may  be  the  immediate  successor 
of  the  original  house  of  Burger  Jorissen,  as  afterwards  held 
by  Cornells  Melyn  and  the  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven.  Upon 
the  Justus  Danckers  view  of  New  Amsterdam,  the  period 
of  which  cannot  vary  much  from  the  year  1650,  this  build- 
ing appears  to  be  clearly  shown,  and  its  position  being  an 
isolated  one,  the  representation  is  likely  to  approach  accu- 
racy, at  any  rate  in  its  essential  details.  The  house  thus 
depicted  is  a  modest-looking  structure  of  a  story  and  a  half 
in  height;  its  gable  end  fronts  the  road,  but  it  has  a  door- 
way towards  the  south,  looking  in  the  direction  of  the  City 
Tavern  and  of  the  river,  the  intervening  space  being  as  yet 
unoccupied  by  any  buildings. 

At  the  "stoep"  before  this  doorway  a  slight  play  of  the 
imagination  will  suffice  to  place  us:  the  elevated  railway 
and  the  warehouses  on  Pearl  Street  and  thence  to  the  river 
have  all  disappeared,  and  in  their  place  the  waves  ripple 
upon  a  shingly  beach ;  at  our  front  the  garden  extends  a 
hundred  feet  or  more  to  the  bank  overlooking  the  shore;  and 
a  well  with  its  rude  sweep  is  seen  among  the  vegetable  beds 
and  the  currant  bushes;  to  the  left  of  us  the  Hoogh  Straet 
stretches  for  a  space,  till  it  is  gradually  lost  as  it  curves 
around  the  large  house  and  grounds  of  Govert  Loocker- 
mans ; 2  between  these  and  the  old  City  Tavern,  or  Town 

1  After  the  completion  of  the  present  work,  and  in  the  latter  part  of  1901,  or 
in  the  beginning  of  1902,  the  old  building  spoken  of  in  the  text  as  occupying  the 
site  of  Steendam's  house  was  demolished.  The  vacant  spot  upon  which  it  stood 
can  be  seen  in  the  view  of  the  site  of  the  Melyn  house  at  the  corner  of  Broad 
and  Stone  streets,  facing  page  124  of  this  work,  at  the  left-hand  side  of  the 
print. 

2  Situated  on  the  present  Hanover  Square. 

9 


130       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Hall,  which  is  backed  by  a  swelling  knoll  and  some  forest 
trees  near  the  shore,  a  vista  opens  far  up  the  dark  blue  waters 
of  the  East  River;  across  the  river  (in  which,  not  far  from 
the  shore,  a  few  New  England  coasters  and  one  or  two  of  the 
high-sterned  sea  ships  of  the  West  India  Company  are  lying 
at  anchor),1  the  last  rays  of  a  summer  sun  gild  the  forests  on 
the  hills  of  Long  Island;  and  at  our  side,  in  a  halo  of  the 
smoke  of  his  evening  pipe,  is  the  patient,  thoughtful,  firm, 
but  somewhat  careworn  face  of  Jacob  Steendam,  long-time 
servant  of  the  West  India  Company,  the  first  poet  of  New 
Netherland,  and  —  if  we  leave  out  of  view  Welde  and 
Mather's  crude  metrical  version  of  the  Psalms,  published 
in  New  England  in  1640,  and  Mrs.  Anne  Bradstreet's 
abstractions,  published  there  at  about  the  same  period  — 
in  all  probability  the  earliest  poet  of  North  America.2 

Jacob  Steendam's  life  had  been  one  of  hardship  and  of 
adventure.    Like  Catullus,  he  found  his  haven  — 

"  Multas  per  gentes,  et  multa  per  cequora  vectus" 

and  it  was  this  wandering  life  that  called  forth  the  lines,  — 

"  0  Steendain !  die  door  zoo  veel  zeen, 
Een  reex  van  vijftien  ronde  jaeren 
U  aen  de  Maatschappij  verbint,"  — 

Thou,  Steendam,  who  o'er  many  a  sea, 

In  service  of  the  Company, 

While  fifteen  years  around  have  rolled,  etc., 

addressed  to  him  by  his  friend,  the  Dutch  poet,  Pieter 
Verhoek. 

1  In  Burger  Jorissen's  day,  in  1641,  a  drunken  gunner,  upon  one  of  the 
vessels  anchored  near  the  shore,  did  considerable  damage  to  this  house,  by  the 
discharge  of  a  shotted  cannon  in  firing  a  salute. 

2  George  Sandys,  while  treasurer  of  the  Colony  of  Virginia  in  its  early  days, 
is  said  to  have  occupied  a  portion  of  his  time  in  preparing  his  translation  of  Ovid. 
As  his  stay  in  the  colony  was  but  a  limited  one,  however,  and  as  his  works  con- 
tain nothing  relating  to  America,  it  is  difficult  to  see  why  he  should  be  called  an 
American  poet.  As  for  the  Rev.  "William  Morrell,  who  resided  for  a  very  short 
time  in  the  Plymouth  Colony  soon  after  its  foundation,  his  verses  published 
after  his  return  to  England,  about  the  year  1625,  in  the  pedantic  Latin  of  his 
day,  and  which  he  called  "  Nova  Anglia,"  are  to  be  looked  upon  more  as  a  liter- 
ary curiosity  than  anything  else. 


ENKHUYSEN 


131 


According  to  the  best  information  accessible,  Steendam 
was  born  about  1616  in  the  city  of  Enkhuysen.  This  old 
town,  in  the  extreme  northeastern  part  of  the  province  of 
Holland,  and  at  the  entrance  to  the  Zuyder  Zee,  though 
now  much  decayed,  was  in  Jacob  Steendam's  time  in  high 
prosperity.  Its  streets  of  substantial  stone  houses  were 
filled  with  a  busy  throng  of  ship-builders,  pilots,  seamen,  the 
fishermen  of  several  hundred  herring  smacks  then  owned  in 
the  city,  and  the  numerous  artisans  and  tradesmen  supplying 
the  wants  of  this  maritime  population.  The  little  city,  too, 
was  proud  of  its  historic  and  scientific  renown;  in  1572  it 
was  the  first  town  in  North  Holland  to  raise  the  standard  of 
liberty  against  the  oppression  of  Spain,  and  its  citizens  had 
fought  valiantly  in  the  Dutch  fleets  and  armies;  the  ships 
built  here  found  their  way  to  all  parts  of  the  globe ;  one  of 
them,  "The  Maid  of  Enkhuysen,"  was  in  the  New  Amster- 
dam trade ;  the  spirit  of  geographical  research  and  of  explo- 
ration became  active,  and  Enkhuysen  boasted  of  several 
renowned  geographers  and  naturalists. 

The  city  lay  in  the  midst  of  a  world  of  waters,  extending, 
as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  to  the  north,  east,  and  south ; 
only  northwards,  across  the  wide  mouth  of  the  Zuyder  Zee, 
the  houses  and  steeples  of  the  old  Frisian  city  of  Staveren 
appeared  to  rise  out  of  the  sea :  — 

"  Am  fernen  Horizonte 
Erscheint,  wie  ein  Nebelbild, 
Die  Stadt,  mit  ihren  Tiirmen 
In  Abeuddammrung  gehullt;  " 

and  far  to  the  east,  the  light  upon  the  island  of  Urck  shone 
dimly  through  the  misty  nights  upon  the  Zuyder  Zee. 

To  a  mind  like  that  of  the  young  Jacob  Steendam,  there 
must  have  come  many  romantic  visions,  as  the  Amsterdam 
ships  passed  daily  by  Enkhuysen  on  their  way  to  and  from 
many  strange  lands,  while  now  and  then  Dutch  men-of-war 
or  privateers  sailed  by  with  their  Spanish  or  Portuguese 
prizes.    The  love  of  adventure  was  strong  within  him,  and 


132       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


at  an  early  age  he  went  to  Amsterdam,  where  he  soon 
entered  the  service  of  the  West  India  Company.1  But 
little  is  known  respecting  the  position  he  occupied  under 
that  corporation,  nor  of  his  particular  travels;  when  about 
twenty -five  years  of  age,  however,  he  was  sent,  in  the  inter- 
ests of  the  Company,  to  the  coast  of  Guinea,  and  was  present 
at  the  taking  of  Fort  Axen  or  Axem  from  the  Portuguese, 
in  1642,2  after  which  his  duties  detained  him  upon  the  Afri- 
can coast  till  the  year  1649,  when  he  appears  to  have  returned 
to  Amsterdam.3 

At  least  as  early  as  1636,  when  not  more  than  twenty 
years  of  age,  Steendam  had  written  verses,  and  about 
1649-50  he  published  a  collection  of  them,  called  "Den 
Distelvink,"  —  "The  Thistle-finch, "  —  which  has  now  be- 
come exceedingly  rare.  This  is  a  little  volume  of  lyrical 
pieces,  chiefly  love  songs,  poems  descriptive  of  his  own  perso- 
nal experiences  and  spiritual  and  devotional  verses  marked 
by  a  deeply  religious  feeling  which  was  characteristic  of  the 
man,  and  which  was  well  alluded  to  by  the  Dutch  author, 
Johan  Nieuwhoff,  in  his  eulogistic  lines  upon  Steendam :  — 

"  De  gaaven  van  zyn  Geest,  in  maatzang  uitgeleezen, 

Verstrecken  Godts  gemeent  een  Harp  die  d'ooren  streeld 
Met  Davids  Hemel-taal.    Wie  kan  zijn  kunst  vollooven? 
Des  Heeren  Lofgezang  gaat  alle  Loff  te  boven." 

1  "  Amsterdam, 

Waar  dat  ik  jeugdig  kwam, 

Van  u  ik  lest  mijn  af-scheijd  nam,"  etc. 

2  «  w"y  hebben  kort  daar  na  (met  seven  kloeke-Schepen), 
Den  Spek  een  Fort  ontmand ;  dat  wy  met  moet  angre'pen  ; 
Waar  op  ik  ben  geleyd  self  in  bet  oog  van  Mars,"  etc. 

3  In  a  poetical  epistle,  dated  at  Fort  Axem  in  Guinea,  7  Aug.,  1642,  to  "the 
very  bright  young  daughter  and  poetess  Aafje  Cornelis,  at  Enchuysen,"  Steen- 
dam gives  several  of  the  details  of  his  journey  to  Africa.  He  sailed  out  of  the 
Texel  on  the  11th  of  October,  1641,  with  a  fleet  of  twenty-seven  sail,  bound  to 
various  quarters  of  the  globe,  and  which  narrowly  escaped  destruction  in  a  severe 
storm  which  overtook  them  on  the  17th  of  October,  off  the  Isle  of  Wight.  On 
December  19,  he  arrived  at  the  Castle  of  Delmijn  in  Guinea. 


THE  POEMS  OF  STEENDAM 


133 


His  spirit's  gifts  divine,  set  forth  in  flowing  song, 

Unto  God's  people  give  a  harp  which  charms  the  ear 

With  David's  heav'nly  theme.    His  art,  what  song  may  praise? 

The  hymn  of  praise  to  God  transcendeth  all  our  lays. 

Many  of  the  poems  of  Steendam  are  signed  with  the  whimsi- 
cal pseudonym  "Noch  Vaster,"  —  "still  firmer,"  —  which  he 
seems  to  have  adopted  from  some  fancied  appositeness  to  his 
own  name,  Steendam  signifying  "stone  dam." 

His  familiarity  with  nautical  affairs  gives  a  flavor  of  the 
sea  to  many  of  the  verses  of  Jacob  Steendam.  In  some  of 
them,  which  are  written  with  a  vigor  calling  to  mind  the 
sea-verses  of  Campbell,  one  can  almost  hear  the  salt  breeze 
whistling  through  the  cordage  of  the  West  India  Company's 
fleet  as  it  sails  southwards :  — 

"Ye  ploughers  of  the  ocean 

And  harrowers  of  the  sea ! 
The  ship  Deventer  goes  before, 

And  with  the  Roe  sail  we. 

And  the  Swan  and  Hind  we  see. 
To  the  Guinea  coast  of  Africa  we  hie, 

To  the  golden  Moorish  land, 

Wherein  God's  mighty  hand 
Hath  planted  our  dominion  far  and  nigh."  1 

Always,  whether  upon  the  sea  or  the  land,  the  poet  finds 
some  subject  of  moral  reflection.  In  the  "eyndelose  wech," 
the  endless  wake  of  the  ship  as  she  sails  through  smooth 
waters,  he  sees  the  swift  flowing  away  of  an  aimless  human 
life;  in  the  image  of  the  anchor,  he  sees  the  right  use  of 
Time.  So,  too,  hear  "  The  Thistlefinch "  singing  to  the 
newly  married  couple :  — 

1  "  Gij  ploegers  van  den  Oceaan 
En  Eggers  in  de  Zee. 
't  Schip  Deventer  wil  voor  ons  gaan, 
Wij  volgen  met  de  Ree, 
De  Swaan  en  Hinde  mee; 
Ons  Oog-wit  is  Guine 
In  Africa. 

Het  goud  rijk  Moren-land, 
Daar  God  krachtig  heeft  geplant 
Onsen  Handel,  voor  en  na." 


134       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


"  A  ship  with  sturdy  timbers 

No  haven  long  may  stay, 
Tho'  Neptune's  foaming  billows 

Are  roaring  on  her  way ; 
But  yet  she  hastens  out, 

Her  tarry  tackle  shining: 
Along  her  brown  hull's  sides 

A  thousand  links  are  twining. 

"  '  T  is  patience  shows  the  helmsman 

The  goal  for  which  he  steers, 
Tho'  Thetis  frowns  upon  him, 

And  Triton's  rage  he  hears; 
Who  with  his  dolphins  all 

The  very  clouds  is  scaling ; 
The  surly  Sun-God  too 

His  face  and  rays  is  veiling. 

"  Now  read  my  hidden  meaning : 

Ye  and  the  ship  are  one  ; 
The  waning  of  affection, 

The  storm  and  reefs  to  shun. 
A  helmsman  is  provided, 

And  youth's  bright  dreams  to  cherish  ; 
The  world's  ways  are  the  Sea,  — 

The  Gulf  where  many  perish."  1 

1  "Een  schip  seer  wel  getimmerd 
Houd  geen  havens-stee; 
Schoon  dat  Neptunus  schimmerd, 
Euyschend  op  de  Ree, 
Nochtans  het  ijld  sich  uyt 
Met  s yn  bepekte  takels ; 
En  bruyn  geverfde  huyd, 
Gehecht  met  duysend  schakels. 

"  Geduld  vertoond  den  Stuurman 
't  Wit  daar  hy  opdoeld 
Al  siet  hem  Thetis  suur  an, 
En  of  Triton  woeld; 
Die  met  syn  Dollephijn 
Tot  an  de  Wolken  steygerd 
Daar  Delius  hem  sijn 
Gesicht  en  Stralen  weygerd. 

"  Let  nu  eens  op  mijn  Mening: 
Gij  dan  sijt  het  schip ; 
d'  Onheylen,  echts-verkl^ning 
Is 't  onweer  en  klip; 
Den  Stuurman  is  u  geeft 
En  jeugds  genegendheden 
De  Zee  (die  m^nig  vreest) 
Vertoond  des  Werelds  zeden." 


"DEN  DISTELVINK" 


135 


In  one  sense,  Steendam's  name  and  his  favorite  poetical 
pseudonym  are  particularly  appropriate :  there  is  one  quality 
conspicuous  all  through  his  writings,  and  it  is  that  of  stead- 
fastness. Some  of  his  imagery  is  not  of  the  most  delicate 
description,  and  his  phrases  are  occasionally  prolix  and  in- 
volved; but  the  earnestness  of  the  man  so  illuminates  his 
work  that  one  would  be  no  more  disposed  seriously  to  criti- 
cise his  verses  than  those  of  Wordsworth  or  of  Whittier. 
He  seems  from  the  very  beginning  to  have  kept  steadily  in 
view  a  plan  of  progression  from  higher  to  higher  aims,  —  a 
design  which  he  never  lost  sight  of,  and  which  he  has  set 
forth  quaintly  in  the  opening  lines  of  "Den  Distelvink." 

"  Here  by  the  Amstel's  stream  the  Thistlefinch  is  singing, 
As  though 't  were  but  to-day  he  from  the  nest  were  winging. 
See  how  the  callow  bird,  with  artlessness  elate, 
Already  seeks  to  pair  and  blythely  calls  his  mate. 
'T  is  sure  that  as  he  chirps  so  erst  his  elders  sung, 
For  as  the  old  birds  sing,  so  chirp  and  pipe  the  young. 
Though  with  the  nightingale's  his  song  may  not  compare, 
He  speaks  in  his  own  tongue  and  sings  to  his  own  air : 
For  tender  little  birds  have  feeble  bills,  I  trow : 
But  yet,  O  loving  youths,  another  tune  ye  '11  know, 
If  ye  can  only  wait  until  his  pinions  grow, 
And  upwards  to  the  clouds  he  '11  soar  from  earth  below."  1 

Seven  years  spent  under  the  tropical  sun  of  Africa  had 
added  more  than  the  years  might  indicate  to  the  cares  of 
Jacob  Steendam  and  to  his  sense  of  the  seriousness  of  life, 
when,  in  1649,  the  long  wished-for  opportunity  arrived  for  a 

1  "  Hier  singt  den  Distelvink  omtrent  des  Amstels  Stromen, 
Als  of  hy  nyt  den  dop  eerst  heden  was  gekomen; 
Siet  doch  het  naakte  Dier  betoont  syn  blyden  aart, 
Het  soekt  en  smeekt  syn  helft,  en  wenscht  te  zijn  gepaart; 
't  Is  seker  so  het  pijpt  ook  eerst  sijn  ouders  songen 
Want  so  den  ouden  singt  so  pijpen  ook  de  jongen. 
Schoon  dat  het  niet  en  queelt  gelijk  den  Nachtegaal, 
Het  singt  op  sijn  manier  en  spreekt  sijn  e}Tgen  taal, 
Want  sachte  vogeltjes  die  hebben  weeke  nebben; 
Ghy  suit  (o  soete  jeucht)  een  ander  deuntje  hebben 
Indien  gij  wachten  kunt,  tot  dat  het  veeren  krygt 
En  van  de  aerd  ora  hooch  tot  door  de  wolken  stijgt." 


136        NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


return  to  the  Netherlands.  His  health  had  suffered  in  the 
pestilential  climate  of  the  country, — "this  poisonous  Africa," 
as  he  calls  it;1  and  he  tells  in  his  verses  of  the  confused 
visions  of  "the  World,  the  Flesh,  and  the  Devil,"  which 
crowded  upon  him  in  the  delirious  hours  of  his  fevers. 
Then,  too,  he  suffered  in  one  of  the  strongest  attachments  of 
his  devoted  nature,  in  the  breaking  up  of  the  companionship 
between  himself  and  his  close  friend  Johannes  Foullon,  one 
of  the  principal  mercantile  agents  in  Africa  of  the  West 
India  Company,  —  a  young  man  of  about  the  poet's  age,  who 
returned  to  Holland  in  1645.  Many  of  Steendam's  verses 
are  addressed  to  this  friend. 

Jacob  Steendam  seems  to  have  reached  the  Netherlands  in 
the  early  part  of  the  year  1649,  for  on  or  about  the  21st  of 
July  of  that  year  the  first  part  of  "Den  Distelvink "  was 
published  at  Amsterdam,  and  on  the  20th  of  November  of 
the  same  year,  the  second  part  of  the  work  was  published 
at  the  same  place,  while  the  third  and  concluding  portion 
appeared  on  the  6th  of  July,  1650.  Prior  to  this  latter  date 
Steendam  seems  to  have  been  married  to  Sara  de  Rosschou, 
whose  praises  he  had  sung  in  some  of  the  verses  of  the  last 
part  of  "Den  Distelvink." 

About  the  year  1652,  Steendam  arrived  at  New  Amster- 
dam, but  whether  he  was  still  in  the  employment  of  the 
West  India  Company  is  not  known.  In  July,  1653,  he 
purchased  a  small  house  and  lot  in  Pearl  Street  directly 
under  the  walls  of  the  fort,  and  here  he  appears  to  have 
resided  for  a  short  time,  till  he  acquired,  in  the  following 
year,  the  house  upon  Hoogh  Straet,  above  described,  which 
was  his  residence  at  the  period  of  our  survey.  Besides  the 
above  parcels  of  land  in  New  Amsterdam,  Steendam  owned 
for  a  time  a  house  and  garden  upon  the  east  side  of  Broad- 
way, about  midway  between  the  present  Beaver  Street  and 

1  "  Hy  sal  u  (beliouden)  brengen 
Uyt  dit  giftig  Africa; 
Hy  sal  u  de  tijd  verlengen, 
Tot  in 't  oud-Batavia,"  etc. 


STEENDAM  IN  NEW  AMSTERDAM  137 


Exchange  Place,  and  a  garden  spot,  or  piece  of  vacant 
ground,  of  about  half  an  acre  in  extent,  on  the  north  side 
of  the  then  recently  laid  out  Prinse  Straet  (now  forming  an 
easterly  extension  of  Beaver  Street),  between  the  present 
Broad  and  William  streets. 

As  to  Steendam's  occupation  while  in  New  Amsterdam, 
but  little  is  known.  A  bill  for  a  dozen  cushions,  supplied 
by  him  to  the  burgomasters  of  the  town  for  their  use  in  the 
Town  Hall,  has  been  taken  as  an  evidence  that  he  was  in 
possession  of  the  trade  of  an  upholsterer,  but  this  is  a  mere 
conjecture,  and  he  calls  himself  indeed  upon  several  occasions, 
a  "trader."  Like  most  of  the  citizens  of  New  Amsterdam 
who  possessed  some  capital,  however,  he  was  interested  in 
farming  operations,  and  soon  after  his  arrival  he  became  the 
proprietor  of  a  plantation  at  Amersfoort  upon  Long  Island, 
and  of  a  tract  of  about  thirty  acres,  doubtless  woodland, 
upon  the  shore  of  the  Mespat  Kill,  at  present  known  as 
Newtown  Creek.  He  seems  to  have  been  a  prosperous  man, 
and  several  mortgages  to  him  appear  upon  the  records  during 
his  sojourn  in  New  Netherland. 

Steendam  remained  about  eight  years  in  New  Amsterdam, 
returning  to  the  Netherlands  in  the  latter  part  of  the  year 
1660,  as  nearly  as  can  be  ascertained.  He  was  deeply 
interested  in  the  affairs  of  the  Colony,  and  he  deplored  the 
neglected  state  into  which  it  had  been  suffered  to  fall, 
between  the  indifference  of  the  Dutch  government  on  the 
one  hand,  and  the  failing  circumstances  of  the  West  India 
Company  on  the  other.  It  was  with  a  view  to  excite  public 
attention  in  the  Netherlands  to  this  condition  of  things  that 
in  1659  Steendam  sent  there  his  first  poem  on  the  affairs  of 
the  Colony;  this  was  called  "The  Complaint  of  New  Am- 
sterdam to  her  Mother."  After  his  return  to  Amsterdam, 
and  about  the  year  1661,  he  published  a  poem  of  some 
length,  entitled  "The  Praise  of  New  Netherland,"  dedicated 
to  Cornelis  van  Ruyven,  then  Secretary  of  the  Colony,  and 
this  was  followed  in  1662,  or  soon  thereafter,  by  a  third  poem, 
bearing  the  odd  appellation  of  "  Prikkel-Versen  "  (which  has 


138       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


been  well  rendered  as  "Spurring  Verses"),  and  designed  for 
the  purpose  of  urging  on  a  proposed  attempt  by  the  city  of 
Amsterdam  to  plant  a  colony  on  the  Delaware  River,  upon 
land  granted  for  that  purpose  by  the  West  India  Company. 

At  the  period  of  Jacob  Steendam's  residence  in  New 
Amsterdam,  the  creative  powers  of  nature  were  still  in  full 
operation  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  settlement.  A 
walk  of  ten  minutes  from  his  home  brought  him  to  rural 
solitudes  along  the  Maagde  Paetje,  or  Maiden  Lane ;  a  walk 
of  less  than  an  hour  brought  him  to  the  primeval  forest 
beyond  Director  Stuyvesant's  bouwery.  The  sight  of  the 
bountiful  gifts  of  nature,  open  to  all,  seems  to  have  inspired 
him  with  a  wonderful  confidence  in  the  future  of  the  land. 
The  prospect  was  undisturbed  by  the  troublesome  questions 
of  a  vast  and  increasing  proletarian  population ;  of  boundless 
municipal  and  private  extravagance;  of  an  army  of  non-tax  - 
paying  professional  politicians,  drawing  their  support  from 
the  tax-paying  classes ;  of  enormous  taxes,  draining  the  life- 
blood  from  trade  and  commerce ;  and  of  vice  too  great  for  the 
police  power  adequately  to  cope  with.  All  these  problems 
were  far  distant;  the  virtues  and  vices  of  the  community 
were  those  of  an  infant  state  of  society.  Many  of  the  people 
were  poor,  but  those  who  were  able  and  willing  to  labor 
could  easily  supply  their  simple  wants,  even  though  it  were 

"  Met  suppaan  en  Harte  vleysch,"  — 

with  suppaan  and  venison ;  and  all  might  reasonably  expect 
materially  to  better  their  condition. 

Steendam  exulted  in  the  land  and  in  its  capabilities;  at 
the  edges  of  the  uplands,  from  under  the  roots  of  the  beeches 
and  alders,  a  thousand  springs  of  the  purest  water  gushed 
forth ;  around  the  settlement  lay,  in  all  directions,  the  virgin 
soil,  "red,  white,  blue,  and  black,"  possessing  the  most 
varied  qualities;  everywhere  he  saw  the  "kills"  rolling  their 
full  streams  through  the  woods;  all  these  it  was  his  delight 
to  extol  in  his  verse.    He  had  perhaps  looked  from  the 


STEENDAM'S  LOVE  OF  NATURE 


139 


Bergen  Heights  upon  the  waving  sea  of  reeds  extending  to 
the  forest-clad  hills  far  away  to  the  west ;  upon  the  beach  at 
Corlaer's  Hoek,  he  had  wandered  among  the  great  boulders 
of  gneiss  and  sandstone  and  trap,  the  detritus  of  the  glacial 
age;  from  his  house  upon  the  East  River  shore  he  had  often 
watched  the  great  forests  of  Long  Island  beyond  the  sand 
bluffs ;  these,  too,  all  appeared  in  his  song.  He  was  a  close 
observer  of  the  exuberant  animal  and  vegetable  life  around 
him :  from  his  own  door  he  had  seen  the  stately  flight  of  the 
eagle,  or  the  poising  of  the  hawk  over  the  East  River,  and 
the  tumbling  of  the  porpoises  in  the  bay;  in  sheltered  coves 
along  the  shores  of  "the  Company's  Bouwerys  "  and  their 
meadows,  the  wild  ducks  and  geese  swam  in  their  seasons; 
at  the  edges  of  the  swamps  along  "Bestevaars  Killetje,"  back 
of  Director  Van  Twiller's  tobacco  fields,  and  not  far  per- 
haps from  where  Washington  Square  now  is,  the  wild  tur- 
keys fed;  quail  started  up  before  him  in  the  pastures  along 
the  Bouwery  Lane;  in  the  thickets  upon  the  Sand  Hills 
the  partridge  whirred  past  him ;  and  as  he  rambled  along  the 
banks  of  the  "Great  Kill,"  the  otter  slid  into  the  water 
before  him;  the  raccoon  and  fox,  the  marten  and  the  mink, 
the  rabbits,  and  the  flying-squirrels,  "leaping  through  the 
air,"  —  he  tells  of  them  all. 

Everywhere,  too,  in  the  autumn  woods,  he  saw  the  nut 
trees,  with  the  ground  beneath  them  covered  with  their 
ungathered  stores ;  in  the  common  pasture  fields  and  in  the 
newly  cleared  lands,  in  early  summer,  he  admired  the  profu- 
sion of  the  strawberries,  "  which  in  proud  scarlet  shine ; "  in 
hedgerows  and  waste  spots,  —  likely  enough  along  Secretary 
Van  Tienhoven's  lane,  where  narrow  and  dingy  Ann  Street 
now  is,  — he  had  gathered  the  bark  and  the  tender  shoots  of 
the  medicinal  sassafras  in  early  spring,  or  the  wild  cherries 
in  late  summer;  in  the  wet  borders  by  Maagde  Paetje,  mint 
and  catnip,  tansy  and  the  bee -haunted  thyme  grew  thickly; 
and  the  gardens  of  the  colonists  were  filled  with  kitchen 
vegetables  without  limit.  To  Steendam's  enthusiastic  mind, 
the  whole  country  was  a  garden,  and  he  sings :  — 


140       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


"  Siet,  mijn  tuyn  leyd  an  twee  Stromen 
Die  van 't  Oost,  en  't  Noorden  komen, 
En  haar  storten  in  de  Zee, 
Visch-rijk  boven  alien  Mee." 

North  and  east  two  streams  supplying, 
'Twixt  the  two  my  garden  lying ; 
Here  they  pour  into  the  sea, 
Rich  with  fish,  beyond  degree. 

The  teeming  life  of  the  waters,  in  fact,  excites  his  special 
admiration,  and  he  tells  of  the  shad  and  the  striped  bass,  of 
the  sea  bass  and  the  blackfish,  of  the  crabs,  lobsters,  mussels, 
and  oysters,  — 

"  So  large  that  one,  in  size,  exceedeth  three 
Of  those  of  Europe." 

Even  the  humble  sunfish  and  perch  of  the  Kolck  pond  are 
not  forgotten. 

In  his  close  observation  of  nature  (more  than  in  his  facility 
of  expression),  Steendam  has  something  of  kin  to  Robert 
Burns,  and  he  could  have  well  appreciated  the  Scotchman 
when  he  sings :  — 

"Ev'n  winter  bleak  has  charms  for  me 
When  winds  rave  thro'  the  naked  tree ; 
Or  frosts  on  hills  of  Ochiltree 

Are  hoary  gray ; 
Or  blinding  drifts  wild-furious  flee, 

Darkening  the  day. 

"  O  Nature  !  a'  thy  shows  an'  forms 
To  feeling,  pensive  hearts  hae  charms ! 
Whether  the  simmer  kindly  warms 

Wi'  life  an'  light, 
Or  winter  howls,  in  gusty  storms, 
The  lang,  dark  night !  " 

Upon  such  a  night  —  perhaps  in  the  year  of  grace  1655  — 
Jacob  Steendam  sits  in  his  armchair,  meditatively  contem- 
plating a  blazing  hickory  log  which  lies  in  the  ample  fire- 
place of  his  house  on  Hoogh  Straet:  — 


" 't  is  noten-hout  dat  niemand  heeft  geplant,'  — 


STEENDAM  RETURNS  TO  HOLLAND  141 


nut-wood,  planted  by  no  human  hand!  Outside,  the  wind 
whistles  about  the  exposed  dwelling;  the  snow  drives 
through  the  dark  street,  where  the  shuttered  windows  give 
no  light;  and  he  hears  the  waves  of  the  East  River  dash- 
ing with  freezing  spray  upon  the  stones  of  the  beach  below 
the  piling  back  of  his  house ;  but  within  doors  the  blaze  of 
the  odoriferous  wood  grows  brighter  and  hotter,  and  he 
exclaims:  — 

"  Wiens  heete  vlam  geen  vocht  noch  koude  wijkt, 
Wiens  geur,  en  reuk,  (vol  angenaamheyt),  lijkt 
Na  Eden's  velden." 

Whose  genial  flame  yields  to  no  damp  nor  cold, 
Whose  odors  fragrant  are  as  those  of  old, 
In  fields  of  Eden. 

The  house  upon  Hoogh  Straet  was  sold  by  Steendam  in 
September,  1656,  to  Jan  Cornelissen  van  Hoorn,  the  ancestor 
of  the  Van  Home  family  of  the  Colony.  The  poet  remained 
several  years  longer  in  New  Netherland,  however,  and  for  a 
time,  about  the  year  1657,  he  is  said  to  be  "  at  present  resid- 
ing in  New  Haven,"  but  as  to  the  business  which  took  him  to 
that  place,  and  as  to  the  length  of  his  sojourn  there,  we 
have  no  information ;  but  in  the  summer  of  1660  we  find  him 
preparing  to  return  with  his  family  to  Amsterdam.  He  now 
entered  into  the  employment  of  the  Dutch  East  India  Com- 
pany, and  in  1666  he  sailed  from  Amsterdam  for  Batavia  on 
the  island  of  Java,  the  emporium  of  the  Dutch  colonies  in 
the  eastern  seas,  he  having  received  the  appointment  of  Zie- 
kentrooster,  or  visitor  and  consoler  of  the  sick  at  that  place, 
—  an  inferior  ministerial  office  in  the  church.  At  Batavia, 
Steendam  was  chosen,  in  1668,  governor  of  the  Orphans' 
House  in  that  city,  and  he  held  that  office  for  several  years, 
still  exercising  occasionally  his  poetical  gifts,  for  he  pub- 
lished here  another  collection  of  lyrical  pieces,  called  "  Zeede 
Zangen  voor  de  Batavische  Jonkheit,"  —  "Moral  Songs  for 
the  Batavian  Youth." 

Here,  then,  Jacob  Steendam  ended  his  days  amid  strange 


142       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


and  unfamiliar  scenes.  As  he  walked  down  the  broad  Keere 
Straet  of  that  rising  city,  he  could  catch  glimpses,  on  either 
hand,  of  canals  with  their  bordering  roadways,  as  he  had 
often  seen  them  at  Amsterdam  or  at  Rotterdam,  but  where 
the  low-roofed  Dutch  houses  which  lined  them  were  oddly 
overtopped  by  tufted  palm-trees,  and  the  canals  themselves 
bore  uncouth  names,  such  as  the  Lion's  Graft,  the  Tiger's 
Graft,  or  the  Crocodile's  Graft.  In  the  crowded  market-place 
he  saw,  besides  the  Dutch  and  Portuguese  from  Europe, 
men  of  the  varied  races  of  southeastern  Asia,  —  Chinese  and 
Malays,  Siamese  and  Cambodians,  natives  of  Sumatra  and 
of  the  Spice  Islands,  with  the  fat,  sleepy-looking  Javanese; 
occasionally  perhaps  a  military  detachment  would  pass  him, 
on  its  way  to  some  service  or  another  in  the  island,  where  the 
Dutch  soldiers,  with  their  heavy  muskets  and  with  their 
field  artillery,  contrasted  strangely  with  the  long-haired, 
turbaned  Amboynese  auxiliaries,  in  the  pay  of  the  East 
India  Company,  bearing  murderous-looking  scimitars  and 
oblong  shields  almost  as  huge  as  those  which  Jacob  Steen- 
dam's  ancestors  had  carried,  when  under  the  leadership  of 
Civilis  they  had  slaughtered  the  Roman  legions  sixteen 
centuries  before. 

Every  day,  when  the  morning  breeze  sprang  up,  a  crowd 
of  vessels  sailed  into  the  port,  as  they  had  thronged  by 
Enkhuysen  with  a  favoring  wind  in  Steendam's  younger 
days ;  but  here  the  Dutch  ships  were  mingled  with  Chinese 
junks,  and  with  all  the  extraordinary  forms  of  naval  archi- 
tecture made  use  of  by  the  islanders.  Looking  landwards 
from  the  city  walls,  the  broad  plantations  of  rice  and  of 
sugar-cane  which  stretched  away  towards  the  dark  mountains 
of  Java,  lay  in  a  quivering  haze  in  that  climate  where 

"  "With  fearful  power  the  noonday  reigns, 
And  the  palm-trees  yield  no  shade." 

The  slow  flow  of  the  Jacatara  River  through  the  heart  of  the 
city  may  have  served  to  recall  to  Steendam  memories  of  the 
Amstel  and  of  Amsterdam;  but  there  was  little  to  bring  to 


STEENDAM'S  FAMILY 


143 


his  mind  his  house  upon  the  East  River  shore  at  New 
Amsterdam,  and  that  New  Netherland  of  which  he  had 
sung : — 

"  Dit  is  het  Land  daar  Melk  en  Hoenig  vloeyd  ; 
Dit  is 't  geweest  daar 't  Kruyd,  (als  Dist'len)  groeyd ; 
Dit  is  de  Plaats  daar  Arons-Roede  bloeyd  ; 

Dit  is  het  Eden." 

This  is  the  land  where  milk  and  honey  flow  ; 
Where  wholesome  herbs  freely  as  thistles  grow  ; 
The  land  where  Aaron's  Rod  its  buds  doth  show ; 
A  very  Eden ! 

Jacob  Steendam  appears  to  have  died  at  Batavia  in  1671, 
or  soon  thereafter,  when  his  wife  was  continued  in  the  super- 
vision of  the  Orphans'  House  at  that  place.  Upon  the  death 
of  the  latter  in  1673,  her  daughter  Vredegond  succeeded  to 
the  same  position,  though  very  young.  This  daughter  of 
Steendam,  who  was  baptized  in  the  Dutch  Church  at  New 
Amsterdam,  April  4,  1655,  was  in  all  probability  born  in 
the  house  upon  Hoogh  Straet,  above  described.  Besides  her, 
Steendam  had  two  other  children  baptized  in  the  Dutch 
Church  during  his  sojourn  at  New  Amsterdam;  namely, 
Samuel,  on  November  18,  1657,  and  Jacob,  on  December  4, 
1658;  whether  the  sons  reached  maturity  is  not  known.1 

1  Most  of  the  scanty  particulars  we  have  respecting  the  life  of  Steendam  have 
heen  gathered  by  Mr.  Henry  C.  Murphy,  and  are  given  in  his  valuable  mono- 
graph on  the  anthology  of  New  Netherland. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


JACOB  VAN  COUWENIIOVEN  AND  HIS  BREWERY.— PRINSE 
STRAET,  AND  "THE  GARDENS."  —  SLYCK  STEEGH,  OR 
MILL  LANE.  — THE  BARK  MILL.  —  DOMINIE  MICHAELIS 
AND  THE  FIRST  DUTCH  CHURCH.  — EVERT  DUYCKINK 


"  Holland  !  Holland !  See,  we  sever 
Like  a  fleet,  each  wending  ever 

Towards  his  fore-appointed  place. 
Farewell,  farewell !  whate'er  betide  us 
This  we  know,  that  God  will  guide  us, 
Whom  we  pray'd  to  be  beside  us ; 

Praised  be  His  grace  ! 
Amsterdam, 

Where  in  my  youth  I  came, 
From  you  my  last  departure  I  must  tell ; 
And  all  my  friends  together,  fare  ye  well, 

I  leave  you,  in  God's  name ! " 


EARLY  opposite  the  house  of  Jacob  Steendam,  upon 


X  Hoogh  Straet,  and  occupying  a  part  of  the  site  of  the 
building  which  stands  upon  the  northeast  corner  of  the  present 
Broad  and  Stone  streets,  but  fronting  upon  the  latter  street, 
stood  at  the  time  of  our  survey  a  house  belonging  to  Jacob 
Wolfertsen  van  Couwenhoven.  This  man,  with  his  two 
brothers,  Peter  and  Gerrit,  were  the  sons  of  Wolfert  Gerrit- 
sen,  of  Amersf  oort,  a  town  of  considerable  size,  about  twenty- 
five  miles  southeast  of  Amsterdam,  and  a  few  miles  south  of 
the  Zuyder  Zee.  That  town  had  suffered  grievously  in  1629 
from  its  occupation  by  an  Austro-Spanish  army,  in  the  drag- 
ging war  which  Spain  was  vindictively  carrying  on  against  the 
United  Provinces,  and  there  is  strong  probability  that  it  was 
this  misfortune  that  led  Wolfert  Gerritsen  and  his  sons  to  seek 


Translated  from  Steendam's  "  Den  Distelviuk.' 


JACOB  VAN  COUWENHOVEN  145 


a  home  in  New  Netherland  in  the  following  year.  The  sons 
themselves  at  this  time  would  seem  to  have  been  men  of  mature 
years;  at  any  rate,  Jacob  van  Couwenhoven  was  familiarly 
known  about  the  town,  in  1655,  as  "  old  Jacob."  The  father, 
for  several  years  prior  to  1639,  hired  one  of  the  newly  cleared 
farms  of  the  West  India  Company,1  being  the  one  commonly 
known  as  "Bouwery  No.  6,"  the  farmhouse  of  which  stood 
upon  the  east  side  of  the  present  Chatham  Square,  its  land 
lying  generally  between  the  present  Division  Street  and  the 
river  shore. 

The  brothers  appear  to  have  been  men  endowed  with  gen- 
erous and  kindly  dispositions;  and  in  1646,  after  the  death  of 
their  father,  and  of  their  brother  Gerrit,  when  they  came  to 
divide  their  slender  patrimony,  they  allowed,  by  an  agreement 
which  is  still  extant,  to  Jan,  one  of  the  young  children  of  their 
deceased  brother,  100  guilders  more  than  to  the  others, 
"because  he  has  not  as  good  health  as  the  others,  and  is  weak 
in  his  limbs,  and  to  all  appearance  will  not  be  a  stout  man." 

Amersfoort,  the  native  town  of  the  Van  Couwenhoven 
brothers,  with  its  great  church  spire  towering  high  above  a 
picturesque  landscape  of  hill  and  dale,  —  quite  different  from 
the  general  character  of  the  scenery  of  the  Netherlands,  — 
was,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  the  seat  of  an  active  transit 
trade  of  tobacco,  beer,  malt  grains,  etc.,  between  the  Nether- 
lands and  Germany ;  barges  from  Amsterdam  and  from  all  the 
ports  of  the  Zuyder  Zee  sailing  up  the  small  river  Eem  to  the 
town,  whence  a  short  land  carriage  brought  their  freight  to  the 
banks  of  the  Rhine.  Many  of  the  inhabitants  of  Amersfoort 
were  familiar  with  the  brewer's  trade,  and  among  these  was 
Jacob  van  Couwenhoven.  He  appears  to  have  had  the  design, 
from  an  early  day,  of  establishing  a  brewery  in  New  Amsterdam, 

1  His  first  employment  was  at  Rensselaerswyck,  near  Albany, where  for  a  time 
he  was  superintendent  of  farms  for  the  patroon  Van  Rensselaer.  After  coming 
to  New  Amsterdam,  he  was  one  of  the  purchasers,  in  1636,  of  a  tract  of  land  from 
the  Indians  at  what  is  now  known  as  Flatlands,  south  of  Brooklyn,  but  to  which 
he  gave  the  name  of  New  Amersfoort.  His  lands  here,  after  his  death,  passed 
to  his  sons,  and  the  descendants  of  his  son,  Gerrit,  under  the  name  of  Couwen- 
hoven, or  Kouwenhoven,  are  still  numerous  upon  the  western  end  of  Long  Island. 

10 


146       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


and  for  this  purpose,  as  early  as  1645,  he  had  obtained  from 
Director-General  Kieft,  the  grant  of  "  a  lot  for  a  dwelling- 
house,  brewery,  and  garden,  lying  behind  the  public  inn." 
This  was  a  plot  of  ground  of  about  sixty-five  English  feet 
front,  by  more  than  one  hundred  feet  in  depth,  situated  also 
on  Hoogh  (Stone)  Straet,  and  a  couple  of  hundred  feet  east  of 
the  parcel  we  are  more  particularly  describing.  Here,  Jacob 
van  Couwenhoven  commenced  operations  by  building  for 
himself  a  substantial  stone  dwelling-house ;  by  the  time  this 
was  completed,  he  found  himself  so  heavily  in  debt,  —  the 
unusual  sum,  for  those  days,  of  about  3,500  guilders,  or 
$1,400  on  his  house  alone, — that  his  brewery  project  was 
deferred,  perforce,  for  a  number  of  years.  Van  Couwen- 
hoven was,  in  fact,  an  inveterate  speculator,  and  wherever 
any  piece  of  property  was  offered  for  sale  at  what  he  thought 
was  a  "  bargain,"  such  as  the  old  church  building  near  the 
shore,  or  the  old  horse  mill  property  upon  Slyck  Steegh  (now 
South  William  Street)  back  of  his  house,  he  stood  ready  to 
buy  it,  without  the  least  regard  to  his  ability  to  pay  for  it. 
It  was  perhaps  in  this  way  that  he  had  become,  prior  to  1654, 
possessed  of  the  plot  of  ground  we  are  more  particularly 
describing,  at  the  corner  of  "  the  Ditch "  and  of  Hoogh 
Straet :  that  piece  of  land  had  been  originally  granted  to  one 
Antony  Jansen,  but  had  been  abandoned  by  him  and  allowed 
to  become,  as  the  records  express  it,  "  a  stinking  pool,"  and 
in  1646  it  had  been  regranted  to  the  prominent  shipping 
merchant,  Govert  Loockermans,  who  was  a  brother-in-law  of 
Jacob  van  Couwenhoven,  their  wives  being  sisters.  Hester 
Jansen,  the  wife  of  Jacob  van  Couwenhoven,  had  died  seem- 
ingly in  the  early  part  of  the  year  1655,  and  he,  with  his 
family  of  four  or  five  young  children,  still  occupied  the  stone 
house  down  Hoogh  Straet  at  the  time  of  our  survey,  while 
the  plot  at  the  corner  of  the  present  Broad  Street,  upon  which 
a  brick  dwelling-house  had  been  built,  probably  either  by 
Govert  Loockermans  or  by  Jacob  van  Couwenhoven  himself, 
was  at  this  time  occupied  by  the  mother  of  his  deceased  wife. 
Adjoining  this  latter  house,  upon  the  east,  stood,  in  1655, 


VAN  COUWENHOVEN'S  BREWERY  147 


two  small  houses  owned  by  Mighiel  Paulussen,  who  followed 
the  occupation  of  a  carter.  The  westernmost  of  these  was 
hired  out  to  different  tenants,  and  in  the  latter  part  of  1655 
became  the  abode  of  Joseph  d'Acosta,  one  of  the  Portuguese 
Jews,  whose  rough  reception  at  New  Amsterdam  in  the  previ- 
ous year  has  been  already  alluded  to  ; 1  the  easternmost  of  the 
two  houses  was  occupied  by  Paulussen  himself ;  he  was  from 
Vraendoren,  in  the  Netherlands,  and  had  married,  in  1640, 
Maria,  daughter  of  Joris  Rappalje,  who  with  her  elder  sister 
Sara  are  supposed  to  have  been  almost  the  first  children  of 
European  extraction  who  were  born  in  the  colony. 2 

It  was  upon  the  site  of  these  latter  houses,  adjoining  his 
own  plot,  which  lay  to  the  west,  that  Jacob  van  Couwen- 
hoven  about  this  time  determined  to  erect  his  long-planned 
brewery.  There  was  a  good  well  upon  the  premises  which 
was  probably  an  object  to  him  in  his  undertaking,  and  which 
possibly  still  exists  under  the  buildings  at  present  covering 
the  site.  In  the  course  of  the  next  year,  1656,  he  had  made 
arrangements  with  Paulussen  for  the  acquisition  of  the 
ground  and  houses  of  the  latter;  the  buildings  were  de- 
molished or  removed,  and  here,  upon  the  site  of  the  present 
Nos.  27  and  29  Stone  Street,  Van  Couwenhoven  commenced 
the  erection  of  his  brewery,  which  was  a  substantial  edifice 
of  stone,  and  evidently  of  considerable  size,  for  it  is  usually 
spoken  of,  in  the  records,  as  "the  great  stone  brew-house." 
All  this  time  he  was  greatly  hampered  by  his  debts :  in  Au- 
gust, 1656,  one  of  his  creditors,  Pieter  Jacobsen  Marius,  made 
an  application  to  the  burgomasters  that  Van  Couwenhoven 
should  be  required  to  sell  some  of  his  property,  and  apply 
the  proceeds  to  the  liquidation  of  his  debts ;  "  otherwise,"  the 
petitioner  says,  "  he  knows  not  when  he  shall  obtain  his  own." 
Van  Couwenhoven  appeared  and  stated  to  the  burgomasters 
that  he  had  already  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  Schout,  or 
bailiff,  his  deed  of  the  old  church  property  upon  the  strand 

1  See  ante,  page  85. 

2  The  claims  of  Jan  Vinje  to  the  honor  of  having  heen  the  first  white  child 
born  in  New  Netherland  will  be  considered  farther  on. 


148       NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


(purchased  by  him  only  three  or  four  weeks  before),  to  be 
held  as  security.  As  Jacob  was  one  of  the  oldest  citizens, 
generally  well  esteemed,  and  prominent  in  the  church  (he 
had  been,  in  1647,  one  of  the  church-wardens,  in  conjunc- 
tion with  Director-General  Stuyvesant,  and  Jan  Jansen 
Damen,  specially  chosen  to  complete  the  church  edifice  in 
the  fort),  the  burgomasters  were  loath  to  adopt  extreme 
measures  ;  he  was  therefore  notified  by  the  magistrates  to  sell 
his  property  at  private  sale,  and  satisfy  his  creditors  within 
fourteen  days,  or  in  default  thereof,  the  Schout  would  be 
ordered  to  sell  the  same  at  public  auction.  Under  this  spur, 
he  sold  the  old  church  lot,  on  the  8th  of  September,  1656,  to 
Isaac  de  Foreest,  and  in  December  of  the  same  year  he  sold 
at  public  auction  his  stone  house,  a  little  farther  down  Hoogh 
Straet,  to  Nicholas  de  Meyer,  after  which  he  seems  to  have 
taken  up  his  residence  upon  his  lot,  at  the  corner  of  the 
present  Broad  Street,  adjoining  his  as  yet  unfinished  brewery. 
He  was  still  heavily  embarrassed,  however,  but  in  the  latter 
part  of  1656,  we  find  his  friend,  Isaac  de  Foreest,  coming 
forward  to  assist  him.  De  Foreest  presented  at  that  time  a 
petition  to  the  Director-General  and  Council,  for  permission 
to  contract  in  advance  with  Jacob  van  Couwenhoven  for  all 
the  beer  the  latter  could  brew  in  the  space  of  a  year,  "  so 
that  such  a  well-situated  brewery  as  that "  (of  Van  Couwen- 
hoven), "may  not  be  abandoned,  but  to  the  contrary  may 
become  the  means  to  maintain  decently  that  man  with  his 
family,  while  otherwise  his  ruin  might  be  unavoidable." 

These  various  measures  seem  to  have  been  of  no  more  than 
temporary  relief.  In  September,  1655,  "  old  Jacob  "  had  mar- 
ried Magdalentje  Jacobse ;  his  first  wife's  children  seem  to 
have  been  possessed  of  some  property  which  was  in  their 
father's  hands  and  which  was  deemed  by  their  other  relatives 
to  be  in  jeopardy;  for  upon  January  3,  1657,  Pieter  van 
Couwenhoven  his  brother,  and  Govert  Loockermans,  the  hus- 
band of  his  late  wife's  sister,  make  an  application  to  the 
Council  for  the  appointment  of  guardians  for  the  children, 
alleging  that  Jacob  "  has  been  inclined  to  enter  into  second 


VAN  COUWENHOVEN'S  BREWERY 


149 


nuptials,  and  is  grossly  encumbered  with  several  heavy  debts, 
which  he  is  daily  increasing." 

Jacob  van  Couwenhoven  treated  with  contempt,  however, 
the  demand  of  the  guardians  for  an  accounting :  he  could  not 
keep  track  of  his  own  affairs;  how  then  could  they  expect 
him  to  know  anything  about  those  of  any  one  else.  The 
guardians  were  forced  to  report  to  the  Council  that  although 
they  had  "  strained  every  nerve,"  they  could  get  no  account 
from  Jacob  of  his  situation :  an  order  of  Council  for  his  arrest 
followed  promptly,  but,  as  nothing  further  appears,  it  is  to  be 
presumed  that  Van  Couwenhoven  patched  up  some  kind  of 
an  account  of  his  children's  estate. 

The  brewery  was  finished,  probably  by  1657,  but  the  affairs 
of  its  proprietor  were  apparently  hopelessly  involved,  and  by 
the  year  1663  Van  Couwenhoven  had  surrendered  his  brew- 
ery and  its  contents  to  his  creditors ;  the  latter  appear  to  have 
permitted  Jacob  to  operate  the  brewery  for  several  years,  but 
in  December,  1670,  some  months  after  Jacob  van  Couwen- 
hoven's  death,  his  executors  conveyed  the  property  to  several 
individuals,  —  OlofT  van  Cortlandt,  Johannes  van  Brugh,  Cor- 
nells van  Borsum,  in  right  of  Sara  Kiersted,  his  wife,  and  Hen- 
drick  Vandewater,  who  appear  to  have  been  a  sort  of  syndicate 
of  creditors. 

Upon  the  westerly  side  of  the  house  and  brewery  of  Jacob 
van  Couwenhoven,  a  narrow  and  irregular  passageway  ran, 
in  1655,  along  the  ditch  occupying  the  middle  of  the  present 
Broad  Street;  and  the  grants  of  land  along  it  infringed 
largely  —  in  some  cases  to  the  extent  of  twenty  feet  or  more 
—  upon  what  we  now  know  as  Broad  Street.1  At  the  period 
mentioned,  four  houses  had  been  built  along  the  easterly  side 
of  this  passageway :  of  these,  it  will  be  sufficient  to  indicate 
in  a  general  way  the  sites  and  the  owners'  names,  as  none 
of  the  latter  were  of  particular  prominence.    At  the  north 

1  In  1670  the  Court  of  Burgomasters  made  an  order  that  the  fence  of  Van 
Couwenhoven's  property  here  "  should  be  drawn  back  and  set  on  the  common 
line  "  of  the  street. 


150        NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


corner  of  the  present  South  William  Street  stood  the  house 
of  Adriaen  Vincent,  who  in  1649  is  spoken  of  as  "  late  cadet 
in  the  company's  service,"  and  as  having  come  from  "  Aecken," 
which  is  perhaps  a  village  of  that  name,  some  six  or  seven 
English  miles  from  the  old  city  of  Ghent.  Vincent  had  ac- 
quired this  plot  of  land  and  built  here  about  1646. 

About  forty  feet  farther  north  was  the  house  of  Simon 
Felle,  a  Frenchman  from  Dieppe  in  Normandy  who  in  1652  had 
purchased  a  house  and  a  small  plot  of  ground  from  Adrieen 
Vincent :  four  years  later  he  married  Anneken  Vincent  of 
Amsterdam,  a  relative,  either  sister  or  daughter  of  Adriaen. 
Fifty  feet  more  intervened  between  this  house  and  that  of 
Abram  Rycken,  one  of  the  older  colonists,  and  the  ancestor  of 
the  Riker  family  of  the  present  day ;  he  had  built  here  as 
early  as  1647.  A  similar  interval  brings  us  to  the  house  of 
Jochem  Beekman,  a  shoemaker,  which  stood  near  the  corner 
of  a  narrow  cross-road,  later  known  as  Prinse  Straet,  and 
which,  somewhat  widened,  exists  to  day  as  an  easterly  exten- 
sion of  Beaver  Street ;  Beekman  had  purchased  a  small  plot 
here  from  Abram  Rycken,  and  had  built  in  or  about  1652. 

As  for  the  Prinse  Straet,  it  and  a  line  a  few  rods  north  of 
the  present  Beaver  Street,  west  of  Broad,  formed  the  southerly 
limit  of  the  West  India  Company's  reserved  parcel  of  pasture- 
ground,  which  has  already  been  spoken  of  1  as  having  been 
leased  to  Jan  Jansen  Damen  in  the  spring  of  1638  :  upon  the 
termination  of  that  lease,  1644,  the  Director  and  Council  de- 
termined to  grant  portions  of  the  land  in  building  plots,  and 
for  that  purpose  the  narrow  Prinse  Straet  was  laid  out  along 
the  southern  bounds  of  the  field.  At  the  period  of  our  sur- 
vey the  street  apparently  contained  but  two  houses  :  one  was 
upon  the  north  side,  and  about  eighty-five  feet  east  of  the 
present  Broad  Street ;  it  had  been  built  about  the  year  1652 
by  Albert  Pietersen,  from  Hamburgh,  a  trumpeter  in  the 
service  of  the  West  India  Company.  The  other  house  stood 
upon  the  south  side  of  the  street  about  fifty  feet  from  Broad 
Street,  and  belonged  to  Lourens  Petersen,  who  had  found 

1  See  ante,  page  9. 


THE  TUYNEN  OR  " GARDENS " 


151 


his  way  to  New  Amsterdam  from  the  seaport  of  Tonsberg 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Christiania  Fiord  in  Norway.  The 
house  is  mentioned  as  standing  here  as  early  as  1647.  Be- 
yond this  point,  the  old  pasture-field  had  been  recently 
broken  up  into  plots  of  about  one-half  acre  each,  which 
in  1654  had  been  granted  to  several  of  the  magnates  of  the 
settlement,  —  to  Nicasius  de  Sille,  member  of  the  Council,  to 
Secretary  Van  Tienhoven,  to  Carel  van  Brugge,  late  commis- 
sary at  Fort  Orange,  and  to  Dominie  Samuel  Drisius.  These 
plots  extended  up  to  the  present  Wall  Street,  and  were  not 
as  yet  improved  at  the  time  of  our  survey  :  they  were  the  tuy- 
nen  or  gardens  ;  and  a  few  years  afterwards,  when  the  pres- 
ent Exchange  Place  was  laid  out  through  them,  it  was  called 
by  the  Dutch,  Tuyn  Straet,  and  by  the  English  subsequently, 
Garden  Street. 

Back  of  the  house  and  brewery  of  Jacob  van  Couwenhoven 
ran  a  narrow  lane,  not  very  agreeable  to  the  eye,  perhaps,  in 
the  seventeenth  century,  but  of  considerable  interest  at  the 
present  day,  in  the  widened  and  somewhat  extended  form 
under  which  it  is  known  as  South  William  Street.  It  is  of 
especial  interest  because  it  is  one  of  the  earliest  and  quite 
probably  the  very  earliest  of  the  Dutch  thoroughfares  re- 
maining as  originally  located.  Its  origin  can  be  traced 
back  clearly  to  the  year  1625  or  1626, —  to  a  period  when 
there  was  as  yet  no  occasion  for  a  road  along  the  East  River 
shore,  when  Broad  Street  was  a  swamp  and  nothing  more,  — 
when  Beaver  and  Marketfield,  Stone  and  Bridge  streets  had 
not  been  thought  of,  and  when  the  site  of  Broadway  was 
covered  with  trees  and  bushes. 

When  the  first  Dutch  vessels  arrived  in  1625,  with  agri- 
cultural colonists  for  Manhattan  Island  and  for  its  immediate 
vicinity,  they  brought  with  them  over  one  hundred  head  of 
cattle,  besides  a  considerable  number  of  horses,  sheep,  and 
hogs.  As  the  few  inhabitants  of  the  place,  who  for  the  pre- 
vious thirteen  or  fourteen  years  had  been  clustered  about  the 
log  block-house  under  Hendrick  Corstiaensen's  command, 


152     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


were  mostly  Indian  traders,  depending  for  their  sustenance 
upon  supplies  from  the  neighboring  Indians  and  from  the 
Netherlands,  they  had  not  engaged  in  agriculture,  and  in  all 
probability  the  island  was  still  in  an  uncleared  condition, 
almost  up  to  the  blockhouse  itself,  since  the  wood  which  the 
inhabitants  needed  for  building  purposes  or  for  fuel  would 
naturally,  owing  to  the  difficulties  of  land  carriage,  have  been 
floated  or  brought  by  boat  from  points  along  the  shores. 
There  being  no  place  in  which  the  cattle  of  the  new  colonists 
could  be  securely  kept  upon  Manhattan  Island,  we  are  in- 
formed that  on  their  arrival  they  were  at  first  landed  upon 
Nutten,  now  Governor's  Island,  and  allowed  to  roam  at  large 
there  until  a  proper  enclosure  could  be  constructed  for  them 
upon  the  island  of  Manhattan.  The  necessary  clearing  and 
enclosure  was  commenced  at  once,  and  was  without  doubt  the 
tract  of  ground  extending  from  a  short  distance  north  of  the 
line  of  the  present  Beaver  Street  to  a  line  about  forty  or 
fifty  feet  north  of  the  present  Wall  Street,  which  latter  limit 
marked  the  southern  boundary  of  the  Vinje  or  Damen  farm, 
which  must  have  been  soon  established  after  the  period  above 
mentioned.  It  is  uncertain  whether  this  enclosure  extended 
farther  west  than  the  present  Broadway,  though  it  is  quite 
probable  that  it  reached  the  North  River  shore :  upon  the 
east  it  probably  extended  a  short  distance  east  of  the  present 
William  Street.  This  tract,  or  the  portion  of  it  east  of 
Broadway,  formed  the  reserved  land  or  pasture  of  the  West 
India  Company,  which,  as  we  have  seen  (ante,  page  9),  was 
in  1638  leased  to  Jan  Jansen  Damen,  having  been  then 
supplanted  by  the  later  pasture-ground,  or  "  commons,"  now 
forming  the  City  Hall  Park  and  its  vicinity. 

The  land  thus  enclosed,  however,  was  nearly  cut  in  twain 
by  the  as  yet  undrained  swamp  along  the  present  Broad 
Street,  and  a  passageway  became  necessary  to  the  eastern 
portion  of  the  enclosure ;  from  the  rude  bridge  thrown  across 
the  brook  which  drained  the  swamp,  a  narrow  lane  led  along 
the  line  of  the  present  South  William  Street,  and  turning 
northwards  near  the  spot  now  occupied  by  the  western  end  of 


THE  SLYCK  STEEGH 


153 


the  well-known  Delmonico  building  which  stands  at  the  in- 
tersection of  South  William  and  Beaver  streets,  it  reached 
the  pasture  at  a  point  a  little  north  of  the  line  of  the  latter 
street.  The  northern  turn  to  this  lane  became  unnecessary 
after  the  opening  of  Smith's  Street  (present  William  Street) 
in  1656  or  1657,  and  that  portion  of  it  was  granted  within  a 
few  years  thereafter  to  private  parties.  It  is  shown,  upon 
"  the  Duke's  Plan  "  of  1661,  and  upon  the  Nicoll  plan  of  1668, 
as  still  partially  open,  but  built  upon  and  obstructed.  After 
Hoogh  (Stone)  Straet  had  become  a  thoroughfare  along  the 
river,  an  opening  was  made  from  the  lane  into  the  latter 
street,  and  this  still  exists  under  the  name  Mill  Street  or  Lane, 
a  mere  open  passageway  between  two  buildings. 

As  might  be  supposed,  this  narrow  lane  running  through 
low  ground  and  trodden  at  first  by  the  negro  wood-choppers 
and  bark-gatherers  of  the  West  India  Company,  then  by  the 
cattle  driven  to  and  from  the  pasture  field,  and  eventually 
abutted  upon  by  the  rear  of  the  houses  and  lots  along  Hoogh 
Straet,  was  never  considered  a  particularly  choice  locality.  It 
was  not  until  1672  that  it  was  ordered  to  be  paved,  and  then 
apparently  only  with  foot-paths.  In  the  Oude  Zyd,  or  old 
quarter  of  the  City  of  Amsterdam,  there  was  a  narrow  street 
of  just  about  the  same  length  as  this  lane,  running  between 
two  of  the  canals  of  the  city.  It  was  situated  in  a  district 
replete  with  interesting  associations  ;  standing  at  the  western 
end  of  this  street,  where  it  opened  upon  the  canal  known  as 
the  Achter  Burg  Wal,  one  saw  at  his  left  several  ancient 
buildings  whose  arched  gateways  opened  into  spacious  en- 
closures,—  these  were  relics  of  the  old  Romanist  days,  two 
convents  long  before  suppressed  and  converted  into  a  portion 
of  the  Great  Hospital  of  Amsterdam ;  beyond  them  was  the 
old  church  of  the  Knights  Templars,  and  the  ancient  Turf 
Market ;  these  edifices  and  grounds  half  surrounded  another 
building,  of  a  very  different  character,  on  the  opposite  side  of 
the  Achter  Burg  Wal  canal  and  at  its  termination;  it  was 
the  famous  Heerelogement,  —  the  City  Hostelry,  open  to  none 
but  persons  of  standing  and  distinction ;  its  capacious  quad- 


154     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


rangle  stood  surrounded  by  moats  like  a  fortress,  and  was  ap- 
proached over  an  arched  bridge.  To  the  right  of  the  observer, 
across  the  same  canal,  was  another  famous  building,  —  the 
ancient  convent  of  St.  Cecilia,  changed  in  the  year  1594  to 
another  hostelry  of  exclusive  character,  known  as  the  Prins- 
senhof,  which  was  associated  with  the  names  of  many  per- 
sons of  distinction  who  had  sojourned  there  :  prominent  among 
these  were  Marie  de  Mddicis,  Queen  of  France,  and  her  beau- 
tiful but  unfortunate  daughter,  Henrietta  Maria,  wife  of 
Charles  I.,  King  of  England.  The  other,  or  eastern  end  of  this 
street,  also  opened  out  upon  noteworthy  localities:  immedi- 
ately to  the  right  were  the  walls  of  the  Oude  Mannen  Huys, 
or  Home  for  the  Aged,  —  one  of  the  noble  charities  of  the 
good  Hester  Klaas,  in  the  sixteenth  century ;  while  at  the 
distance  of  two  or  three  blocks  to  the  left  stood  the  Dol  Huys, 
or  Hospital  for  the  Insane,  —  likewise  a  sixteenth-century 
foundation ;  and  beyond  this  was  the  great  house  of  the  East 
India  Company. 

Notwithstanding  the  proximity  of  its  lofty  neighbors,  how- 
ever, the  little  street  in  question  remained  very  unassuming 
indeed,  and  had  received  the  humble  appellation  of  Slyck 
Straet,  or  the  Muddy  Street.  It  was  perhaps  in  remembrance 
of  this  street  at  home  —  since  nearly  every  street  in  New 
Amsterdam  bore  the  name  of  a  corresponding  street  in  the 
old  city  —  that  the  lane  we  have  been  describing  received  the 
designation  of  Slyck  Steegh.  When  the  English  began  to 
come  into  the  town,  after  the  surrender  in  1664,  the  names  of 
the  streets  were  changed  or  modified  in  many  instances.  The 
Slyck  Steegh  is  spoken  of  in  certain  deeds  about  the  year  1679 
as  "  Dirty  Lane,"  and  about  1683,  as  "  the  Mude  Street."  Al- 
though Dirty  Lane  was  a  familiar,  not  to  say  prominent,  London 
street  in  the  seventeenth  century,1  the  name  never  became 

1  "  He  mounted  synod-men,  and  rode  'em 
To  Dirty  Lane  and  Little  Sodom,"  etc. 

[Butler's  Hudibras,  Part  IL,  Canto  i.,  367.] 

In  1830,  besides  the  historic  "Dirty  Lane"  of  "Hudibras,"  —  in  Southwark, 
near  the  notorious  "  Mint,"  —  there  was  another  street,  with  the  same  official  desig- 


THE  OLD  BARK  MILL 


155 


popular  in  New  York,  and  the  Slyck  Steegh  gradually  came 
to  be  called,  from  the  horse-mill  upon  it  (of  which  we  shall 
speak),  Mill  Street  or  Lane.  It  retained  this  name  till  about 
1832,1  when  it  was  extended  through  into  William  Street,  and 
its  former  historic  name  was  changed  to  the  singularly  inap- 
propriate one  of  South  William  Street. 

However  uninviting  the  Slyck  Steegh  may  have  been  from 
an  aesthetic  point  of  view,  New  Yorkers  should  not  forget  that 
upon  its  northern  side  was  erected,  in  1626,  the  earliest  build- 
ing in  New  Amsterdam,  of  which  the  site  can  be  pointed  out  at 
the  present  day.  By  a  communication  from  the  colony  in 
the  above  year,2  it  is  stated  that  Francois  Molemaecker  (the 
mill-wright)  is  employed  in  the  construction  of  a  horse  mill, 
with  a  spacious  room,  to  accommodate  a  large  congregation, 
and  it  was  at  that  time  also  proposed  to  add  to  it  a  tower,  in 
which  the  bells  captured  by  the  Dutch  and  brought  from  Porto 
Kico  were  to  be  hung.  This  mill,  with  its  small  belfry  tower, 
the  conical  roof  of  which  can  be  distinguished  in  the  Justus 
Danckers  View  of  New  Amsterdam,  of  about  1650,  was  erected 
upon  the  north  side  of  the  lane  afterwards  known  as  the  Slyck 
Steegh,  and  upon  ground  at  present  covered  by  the  buildings 
Nos.  32  and  34  South  William  Street,  occupied  as  a  wine 
storehouse.  The  mill,  which  was  one  of  three  erected  by  the 
West  India  Company  at  its  new  settlement,3  was  employed  in 
the  grinding  of  bark  to  be  used  for  tanning  purposes,  and  its 
location  near  the  edge  of  the  Broad  Street  swamp  was  doubt- 
less determined  by  the  availability  of  the  ground  for  tan  pits. 

Here,  then,  in  the  loft,  or  upper  story  of  the  bark  mill,  in 

nation,  in  the  Strand,  near  the  Savoy,  and  still  anothe1*  one  in  Shoreditch,  not 
very  far  from  St.  Leonard's  church. 

1  In  the  eighteenth  century,  it  was  occasionally  spoken  of  as  "The  Jews' 
Lane,"  from  the  Jewish  synagogue  which  stood  upon  its  north  side. 

2  Set  forth  in  Wagenaar's  Hist.  Verhael.,  Amst.,  1621-32. 

3  The  others  were  wind-mills,  one  a  saw-mill  situated  on  Nutten  or  Governor's 
Island ;  the  other,  a  grist-mill,  seems  to  have  stood  upon  the  bluff  above  the  North 
River  shore,  a  short  distance  northwest  of  the  fort.  Upon  its  accidental  destruc- 
tion by  fire,  a  new  one  was  built  a  little  southwest  of  the  fort.  It  is  the  earlier 
grist-mill  which  is  shown  in  the  Hartgers  View  of  New  Amsterdam,  of  about  1632. 


156     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


1628,  Dominie  Jonas  Michaelis  assumed  the  charge  of  the  first 
religious  congregation  within  the  limits  of  the  present  State  of 
New  York.  He  was  a  man  of  middle  age,  who  was  born  in 
North  Holland  in  1577,  and  who  had  entered  as  a  divinity 
student  at  Leyden,  in  the  year  1600,  where  he  is  said  to  have 
been  contemporaneous  with  the  famous  Dutch  scholar,  Ger. 
Johannes  Vossius,  and  with  Jacob  Cats,  who  afterwards 
attained  such  great  fame  as  a  poet,  in  the  Netherlands.  Of 
his  further  history  we  know  but  little,  save  that  it  is  stated 
that  he  was  settled  as  pastor  at  Nieuwbokswoude,  a  village  in 
North  Holland,  in  1612,  and  two  years  later,  in  the  church  at 
Hem  (Henisteede  ?).  In  1624,  upon  the  taking  of  San  Salvador, 
in  Brazil,  from  the  Portuguese,  by  the  Dutch  Admiral,  Heyn, 
Dominie  Michaelis  received  the  appointment  of  minister  at 
that  place.  The  town  being  retaken  in  the  next  year  by  the 
Portuguese,  however,  Michaelis  was  transferred  to  the  Dutch 
possessions  on  the  coast  of  Guinea,  then  recently  captured 
from  the  Portuguese ;  he  did  not  remain  here  long,  however, 
for  in  1627  he  returned  to  the  Netherlands,  and  in  J anuary  of  the 
following  year  he  sailed  for  New  Amsterdam.  He  was  evi- 
dently a  man  of  considerable  mental  attainments,  for  at  New 
Amsterdam  he  preached  at  times  in  the  French  language  to 
the  Walloon  settlers.  His  sole  literary  remains  of  which  we 
have  knowledge  are  to  be  found  in  a  letter  to  the  fatherland, 
bearing  date  August  11,  1628,  in  which  he  appears  to  be 
an  earnest  and  patient  minister  of  the  Christian  religion, 
struggling  against  more  than  common  trials  in  the  new 
country  in  which  he  had  cast  his  lot.1 

Both  Dominie  Michaelis  and  his  congregation  must  have 
often  found  themselves  contrasting  painfully  the  new  condi- 
tions surrounding  them  with  the  old.  Among  the  men  and 
women  who  met  here  to  worship,  there  were  those  who  remem- 
bered the  Oude  Kerk  —  the  old  church  —  of  Amsterdam, 
with  its  thirty  environing  chapels,  dark  with  the  very  rich- 
ness of  their  stained  glass  adornment,  and  where  a  score  of 
many-branched  lustres  shed  a  soft  light  on  the  benches  of  the 

1  See  the  letter,  with  notes  of  Doctor  O'Callaghan,  in  2  N.  Y.  Col.  Doc.  763. 


DOMINIE  MICHAELIS  AND  HIS  CHURCH  157 


grave  magistrates  of  the  city,  and  on  the  marble  tombs  of  great 
men  who  had  died  for  their  country  on  land  and  on  sea,  in  the 
yet  unfinished  war  for  Dutch  independence ;  others  had  mem- 
ories of  the  great  church  of  St.  Lawrence  at  Rotterdam,  look- 
ing down  majestically  upon  the  placid  canals  which  environed 
it,  and  upon  the  statue  of  that  giant  of  intellect,  Erasmus ; 
some  had  listened  to  the  chiming  of  the  four  hundred  bells  of 
the  "New  Church"  of  Delft, or  had  contemplated  with  reverence 
the  tomb  of  William  the  Silent  in  that  famous  edifice;  some 
had  worshipped  in  the  sublime  cathedral  of  Antwerp,  the  lofty 
and  solemn  Gothic  arches  of  which  were  a  sermon  in  them- 
selves. Now,  from  the  windows  of  their  unadorned  loft  over 
the  bark  mill  on  the  edge  of  Blommaert's  Vly,  they  looked 
northward  over  a  rough  pasture-field  gently  sloping  up  to  a 
low  ridge  of  hills,  where  the  trees  which  then  covered  the 
Pine  Street  and  Cedar  Street  of  to-day  were  gradually  disap- 
pearing under  the  axes  of  the  negro  wood-choppers;  looking 
to  the  east,  between  them  and  the  East  River  shore,  and  upon 
the  broad  river  itself,  and  in  the  Long  Island  forests  beyond, 
no  signs  of  human  life  were  discernible,  unless  perchance  an 
Indian  canoe  or  two  paddled  along  the  shore;  only  to  the 
southwest,  across  the  narrow  swamp  which  intervened,  a  few 
thatched  cottages  clustered  around  the  slowly  rising  walls  of 
the  fort. 

To  many  of  the  congregation  of  Dominie  Michaelis  in  this 
rude  place  of  worship,  the  lessons  of  religion  must  have 
appealed  with  peculiar  force  amidst  the  hardships  and  uncer- 
tainties with  which  they  were  surrounded,  and  in  the  loss  of 
most  of  the  old  associations  of  their  lives.  Death  came,  too, 
and  within  these  rough  walls  often  sounded  the  solemn  words 
of  the  reader :  "Ik  ben  de  opstanding  en  het  leven ;  die  in 
mij  gelooft,  zal  leven,  al  ware  hij  ook  gestorven ;  en  een 
iegelijk  die  leeft,  en  in  mij  gelooft,  zal  niet  sterven  in 
eeuwigheid," — recalling  to  his  hearers  the  profound  mystery  of 
the  Resurrection  and  the  Life  ;  even  the  good  Dominie  himself 
must  have  heard  them  with  new  emotions  when,  in  the  very  year 
of  his  arrival,  he,  with  his  two  little  motherless  daughters,  fol- 


158     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


lowed  the  funeral  procession  of  his  deceased  wife  over  the 
little  bridge,  across  the  Marckveldt,  and  to  the  barren  spot 
just  north  of  it,  upon  a  hillock  overlooking  the  North  River, 
where  the  dead  of  the  new  settlement  slept  their  last  sleep  in 
unmarked  graves.  The  retirement  of  Dominie  Michaelis,  and 
the  advent  of  Dominie  Bogardus,  in  1633,  was  marked  by  the 
erection  of  a  separate  church  building  near  the  river  shore, 
and  upon  the  present  Pearl  Street,  of  which  previous  mention 
has  been  made.1  The  bark  mill,  no  longer  required  for  public 
uses,2  seems  to  have  been  in  part  turned  into  quarters  for  some 
of  the  negro  slaves  of  the  West  India  Company.  In  a  deed  of 
1643,  this,  with  a  parcel  of  land  adjacent,  is  spoken  of  as  "  the 
negroes'  plantation,"  being  doubtless  a  vegetable  plot  culti- 
vated by  them ;  in  another  instrument,  of  1656,  it  is  alluded  to 
as  "  the  house  the  negroes  live  in."  Somewhere  about  this 
latter  period,  a  new  bark  mill  was  established  by  private  parties, 
very  near  the  southwest  corner  of  the  present  Broad  Street 
and  Exchange  Place,  and  the  old  mill,  which  was  under  the 
control  of  the  Deaconry  of  the  Church  in  1660  (and  which 
may,  indeed,  have  been  so  controlled  from  the  period  of  its  use 
as  a  church),  was  sold  in  1663  to  Go  vert  Loockermans,  and 
remained  in  existence  many  years.3 

The  only  other  house  which  appears  to  have  existed  upon 
the  Slyck  Steegh,  in  1655,  was  that  of  Evert  Duyckink.  This 
man,  who  was  a  glassmaker  from  Borcken,  in  Westphalia,  a 
small  town  a  few  miles  beyond  the  boundary  of  the  Nether- 
lands, received  a  grant  of  somewhat  more  than  half  an  acre 
of  ground  upon  the  north  side  of  the  Slyck  Steegh,  in  1643. 
Marrying,  two  or  three  years  later,  Hendrickje  Simons,  a  young 
woman  from  his  own  district  in  Westphalia,  he  appears  to 
have  built  upon  this  ground,  and  to  have  resided  here  a 

1  See  ante,  page  58. 

2  It  seems  to  be  the  mill  referred  to  in  a  report  of  1638  to  the  West  India 
Company,  as  being  then  out  of  repair. 

8  In  1667  Loockermans  sold  the  old  mill  to  Jacques  Cousseau;  the  latter  sold 
the  premises  to  Carsten  Jansen  in  January,  1671,  and  in  1679  Jansen's  executor 
sold  the  same  to  Clement  Sebrah. 


EVERT  DUYCKINK'S  HOUSE 


159 


number  of  years.1  The  location  of  his  house  is  uncertain, 
but  there  are  some  reasons  for  supposing  that  it  stood  nearly 
one  hundred  feet  east  of  the  bark  mill,  and  upon  or  very 
near  the  site  of  the  present  buildings,  Nos.  20  and  22  South 
William  Street,  but  some  twenty-live  feet  or  more  back 
from  the  north  side  of  the  lane.  In  1674,  Duyckink,  who 
had  some  time  before  removed  to  another  part  of  the  town, 
sold  his  house  on  Slyck  Steegh,  with  what  then  remained  of 
his  original  plot  (being  in  size  about  three  city  lots),  to  Jacob 
Melyn,  the  son  of  Director-General  Stuyvesant's  old  antago- 
nist, Cornells  Melyn.  Jacob  Melyn  held  this  property  for  many 
years,  but  it  does  not  seem  to  have  been  a  profitable  invest- 
ment for  him,  for  in  or  about  1697,  he  being  then  a  resident 
of  Boston,  we  find  him  giving  a  letter  of  instruction  to 
Abraham  Schellinger  of  Easthampton,  Long  Island  (who  was 
probably  his  nephew,  the  son  of  his  sister  Cornelia,  wife 
of  Jacob  Schellinger,  already  referred  to),  to  repair  to  New 
York  and  endeavor  to  sell  his  house  on  Mill  Street,  "  and  if 
no  sayle  can  be  obtained,  nor  person  be  to  be  gott  to  live  in 't  on 
any  acct.,  then  to  naile  up  doors  and  windows  with  roff 
boards,  and  secure  the  glass."  The  agent  was  not,  however, 
forced  to  this  last  resort  of  a  disgusted  landlord,  for  in  May, 
1697,  he  sold  the  premises  to  Doctor  Johannes  Kerf byl, formerly 
of  Amsterdam,  a  prominent  physician  of  his  day  in  the  city. 
Doctor  Kerfbyl  was  a  resident  of  the  city  as  early  as  1686,  when 
we  find  him  dwelling  upon  the  west  side  of  Broad  Street.  He 
is  said  to  have  been  a  graduate  of  Leyden,  and  was  at  one 
time  a  member  of  the  Governor's  Council  at  New  York,  but 
his  success  excited  jealousy  among  some  of  his  neighbors,  and 
he  was  denounced  as  a  "charlatan."  It  was  probably  the 
Doctor's  son,  of  the  same  name  as  his  father,  who  was  natu- 
ralized by  Act  of  Parliament,  in  6  Anne  (1707).    As  for  the 

1  His  family  included  Cornelis  Jansen,  an  orphan  lad  of  thirteen  years  at  the 
period  of  our  survey,  whose  parents  had  been  killed  by  the  Indians  at  their 
farm  at  Sapokauican  (the  later  Greenwich),  in  the  war  of  1643.  Their  three 
children,  aged  respectively  four,  three,  and  one  years  of  age,  at  that  time,  were 
received  into  different  families  in  the  town. 


160     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Doctor  himself,  he  must  have  died  soon  after  his  purchase  of 
this  property  in  1697.  The  premises  then  passed  into  the 
hands  of  Jewish  purchasers,  and  became  the  site  of  the  first 
Jewish  synagogue  in  New  York,  which  was  established  here 
between  the  years  1697  and  1700.1 

1  The  closed  portion,  or  northerly  turning  (before  referred  to)  of  the  Slyck 
Steegh,  appears  to  have  been  in  part  in  the  possession  of  one  Richard  Elliott,  a 
cooper,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century.  This  man,  who  was  a  resi- 
dent of  New  York  as  early  as  1672,  dwelt  here  for  many  years  with  his  wife  and 
four  sons.  Of  the  latter,  three  died  young  and  unmarried,  while  the  fourth  son, 
Henry,  went  to  sea  about  the  year  1701,  and  was  never  again  heard  of.  Both 
Elliott  and  his  wife  died  prior  to  the  year  1714,  and  as  no  person  appeared  to 
claim  any  interest  in  the  property,  it  remained  apparently  ownerless  till  1721, 
when,  under  the  legal  procedure  then  in  force,  the  property  was  adjudged  to  have 
escheated  to  the  British  Crown  for  want  of  heirs.  Thereupon  the  Council  made 
the  following  curious  order, — a  handsome  tribute  to  the  worthy  and  modest 
pastor  of  the  little  French  Huguenot  Church  on  King  (now  Pine)  Street:  "For- 
asmuch as  his  Majesty's  Council  of  this  province  did  conceive  that  the  granting 
thereof  "  (that  is,  of  Letters  Patent  of  the  escheated  land)  "as  an  encouragement 
to  learning,  could  not  but  be  acceptable  to  his  Majesty,  and  that  they  knew  not  of 
a  more  proper  and  deserving  person  of  such  favor  than  Mr.  Lewis  Rou,  minister  of 
the  French  Church  in  tins  city,  who  in  Divinity,  History,  and  Cronology  [sic], 
and  many  other  parts  of  learning,  is  as  great  a  master  as  any  in  his  Majesty's 
colonies  in  America ;  "  they  therefore  give  their  assent  to  the  issuing  of  Letters 
Patent  to  him.  This  is  apparently  the  property  now  occupied  by  the  rear  addi- 
tion, upon  South  William  Street,  of  the  Delmonico  building. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


THE  HOUSES  OF  BARENT  J  AN  SEN,  JAN  NAGEL,  CLAES 
CARSTENSEN,  AND  JO  C HEM  C ALDER.  — PIETER  AN- 
DR1ESSEN  AND  HIS  TROUBLES  WITH  THE  INDIANS.— 
NICHOLAS  DE  MEYER.  — WESSEL  EVERTSEN,  THE  FISH- 
ERMAN—RUT JACOBSEN 

UPON  the  north  side  of  Hoogh  (Stone)  Straet,  and  im- 
mediately east  of  the  ground  where,  soon  after  the 
period  of  our  survey,  Jacob  van  Couwenhoven  erected  his 
brewery,  already  mentioned,  there  stood,  in  the  year  1655, 
three  small  houses  in  close  juxtaposition.  The  eight-story 
yellow  brick  building  of  an  electrical  construction  company, 
which  now  covers  the  site  of  these  humble  dwellings,  towers 
above  the  surrounding  warehouses,  as  the  cottages  them- 
selves were  over-towered  in  the  seventeenth  century  by  Van 
Couwenhoven's  " great  stone  brew-house." 

The  first,  or  westernmost  of  these  buildings,  was  the  house 
of  Barent  Jansen.  He  was  one  of  the  earlier  colonists,  but 
hardly  anything  in  relation  to  him  can  be  gleaned  from  the 
records.  His  very  patent  or  ground-brief  for  this  land  can- 
not be  found,  and  its  existence  is  only  learned  by  allusions  to 
it  in  other  instruments.  It  was  a  parcel  of  about  thirty-seven 
English  feet  frontage  upon  Hoogh  Straet,  and  it  extended 
back  to  the  Slyck  Steegh.  Upon  its  western  side  it  would 
appear  that  Barent  Jansen  must  have  built  a  small  house  at 
an  early  date.  Intimately  connected  with  Jansen  in  some 
way  —  probably  by  marriage  —  was  one  Claes  Carstensen,  a 
Norwegian  of  middle  age,  from  the  village  of  Sonde  in  the 
southern  part  of  Norway. 

Barent  Jansen  must  have  died  before  the  spring  of  1647, 

11 


162     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


for  in  March  of  that  year  a  grant  which  had  been  made  to 
him,  of  fifty  morgens,  or  about  one  hundred  acres  of  land  on 
the  west  side  of  the  Hudson  River,  but  for  which  he  had 
never  received  his  ground-brief,  was  vested,  by  the  Director 
and  Council  in  Claes  Carstensen.  In  what  way  this  latter 
individual  obtained  an  interest  in  the  Hoogh  Straet  property 
we  do  not  know;  but  soon  after  1647  he  is  found  in  posses- 
sion of  a  small  house  upon  the  easterly  half  of  the  Jansen 
grant,  which  house  he  sold  a  few  years  after  that  date  to  Jan 
Nagel.  As  to  the  house  upon  the  westerly  side  of  the  plot, 
supposed  to  have  been  built  by  Barent  Jansen,  it  appears  in 
1662  as  then  in  the  joint  occupation  and  tenure  of  Claes 
Carstensen  and  of  Jan  Barentsen  Kunst,  probably  the  young 
son  of  Barent  Jansen. 

Claes  Carstensen,  together  with  Jan  Forbus  (usually 
spoken  of  as  Jan  de  Swede),  Pieter  Jansen  Noorman,  Dirck 
Volckertsen  and  Jacob  Haes,  formed  a  little  clique  of 
Scandinavians,  closely  associated  in  various  enterprises,  and 
owners  at  an  early  date  of  a  large  portion  of  the  lands  em- 
braced in  the  present  Williamsburgh  and  Green  Point  in 
Brooklyn.1 

The  dwelling-house  held  by  Claes  Carstensen  upon  the 
eastern  part  of  Barent  Jansen's  ground,  as  above  mentioned, 
was  sold  by  him  in  1653  to  Jan  Nagel,  who  resided  here 
at  the  time  of  our  survey.  This  man,  who  was  from 
Limburg  in  the  Netherlands,  had  come  to  New  Amsterdam, 
like  many  others  among  the  colonists,  as  a  soldier  in  the 
employ  of  the  West  India  Company,  and  is  spoken  of  in 
164T  as  "late  cadet"  in  that  service;  in  later  years  he  was 
commonly  known  as  "Sergeant  Nagel. "  Jan  Nagel  must 
have  died  about  the  year  1657,  but  his  son,  of  the  same 
name,2  became  prominent  some  twenty  years  later,  as  one  of 

1  Carstensen  was,  it  seems,  in  high  repute  among  the  colonists  on  account  of 
his  acquaintance  with  the  Indian  language.  Riker,  in  his  "  History  of  Harlem," 
states  that  he  acted  as  interpreter,  upon  the  occasion  of  the  treaty  with  the 
Indians  at  the  general  gathering  upon  Schreyers  Hoek,  south  of  the  fort,  on 
August  30,  1645. 

2  This  son,  who  was  born  in  1653,  seems  to  have  been  really  named  Jeuriaen 


THE  NAGEL  FARMHOUSE 


163 


the  earlier  settlers  of  the  town  of  Haerlem,  who  with  his 
associate  Jan  Dykman,  ancestor  of  the  family  of  that  name, 
restored  to  cultivation  the  farms  on  the  extreme  northern 
end  of  Manhattan  Island,  which  had  been  devastated  by  the 
Indians  in  1655,  and  had  lain  waste  and  abandoned  for  more 
than  a  score  of  years.  The  small  antiquated  yellow  farm- 
house, which,  with  its  decaying  orchard  and  neglected  fields, 
—  almost  the  last  remnants  of  the  farming  days  of  Manhattan 
Island,  —  was  still  to  be  seen  as  late  as  the  beginning  of  the 
year  1901  upon  the  banks  of  the  Harlem  River  just  below 
King's  Bridge,  and  which  often  excited  the  curious  attention  of 
the  traveller  approaching  New  York  City  on  the  trains  of  the 
New  York  Central  Railway,  must  have  stood  very  near  the 
site  —  if  not  exactly  upon  it  —  of  the  Nagel  farmhouse  of 
the  seventeenth  century;1  and  the  uncared-for  burial-ground 
of  several  generations  of  that  family  lies  a  few  hundred  feet 
west  of  the  site  of  the  house.  The  spot,  with  its  memories 
of  Indian  warfare,  of  the  murdered  Tobias  Teunissen,  and  of 
the  marching,  counter-marching,  and  fighting  of  Americans, 
British,  and  Hessians  in  the  War  of  the  Revolution,  ought  to 
have  been  preserved  and  maintained  by  the  City  of  New 
York,  as  one  of  the  very  few  surviving  mementos  of  early 
days. 

But  to  return  to  our  survey  of  Hoogh  Straet;  the  third,  or 
easternmost  of  the  three  small  houses  previously  spoken  of 
as  occupying,  in  the  year  1655,  the  site  of  the  present  large 
building  known  as  Nos.  31  to  35  Stone  Street,  was  the 
cottage  of  one  Jochem  Calder,  who  had  obtained  a  ground- 
brief  for  the  land  in  1645,  and  who  seems  to  have  built  within 
a  short  time  thereafter  upon  the  westerly  side  of  his  plot  of 
about  thirty-seven  English  feet  in  frontage.     Very  little 

Jansen  Nagel,  but,  like  many  others  of  the  colonists,  he  was  rarely  known  by  his 
christened  name.  He  married,  while  still  very  young,  Rebecca,  the  daughter  of 
Resolved  Waldron. 

1  It  was  destroyed  by  fire  soon  after  the  date  above  mentioned.  The  small 
Dntch  bricks  which  are  worked  into  the  substantial  foundations  of  this  house 
afford  additional  support  to  the  statements  in  the  text. 


164     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


information,  however,  can  be  gathered  from  the  records 
respecting  this  man;  he  had  died  prior  to  1659,  in  which 
year  his  widow  Magdalena  married  Gysbert  Teunissen. 

Passing  over  two  garden  spots,  or  vacant  places,  belonging 
to  this  last-mentioned  plot  and  to  the  next  one,  we  come  to 
the  house  of  Pieter  Andriessen,  upon  the  site  of  which  at 
the  present  day  stands  the  building  No.  41  Stone  Street. 
Andriessen  was  a  native  of  the  province  of  Brabant,  in  the 
Netherlands,  and  came  over  to  New  Amsterdam  in  1639  in 
the  ship  "De  Brant  van  Trogen  "  ("The  Conflagration  of 
Troy"),  with  Captain  Jochem  Pietersen  Kuyter  and  Jonas 
Bronck.  Upon  their  arrival  at  New  Amsterdam,  Andriessen 
and  one  Laurens  Duytts,  his  fellow-passenger  upon  the  vessel, 
were  hired  by  Jonas  Bronck  to  undertake  the  clearing  of  a 
tract  of  five  hundred  acres  which  Bronck  purchased  from  the 
Indians  upon  his  arrival,  and  which  lay  upon  the  mainland 
beyond  the  Harlem  River;  it  covered  what  is  now  known  as 
Morrisania,  and  Pieter  Andriessen  and  his  co-laborer  were 
therefore  the  pioneers  of  the  present  Borough  of  the  Bronx.1 
How  long  Andriessen  was  employed  upon  Bronck's  land  we 
are  not  informed.  Jonas  Bronck  died  about  the  year  1643, 
and  his  property  passed  into  other  hands.  In  1645,  Andries- 
sen obtained  the  grant  of  his  lot  of  about  thirty-seven  feet 
front  on  Hoogh  Straet,  and  no  doubt  soon  built  there,  as  the 
officers  of  the  West  India  Company  were,  as  a  rule,  disposed 
to  insist  upon  a  speedy  improvement  of  plots  granted  by  them 
in  the  town.  In  the  fall  of  the  same  year,  however,  he  also 
acquired  a  farm  of  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  acres  upon 
the  East  River  shore  of  Long  Island,  being  a  tract  upon 
which  one  Jan  Jacobsen  Carpenel,  familiarly  known  as  Jan 
of  Haerlem,  had  previously  begun  a  clearing.  This  farm, 
which  covered  the  middle  portion  of  the  locality  along  the 

1  The  agreement  between  Bronck,  Andriessen,  and  Duytts  in  1639,  is  still 
extant.  Bronck  was  to  advance  to  the  two  men  121  florins  to  pay  their  board 
upon  the  ship.  The  two  were  to  have  liberty  to  plant  tobacco  and  maize  upon 
Bronck's  land  upon  condition  that  they  should  break  up  a  certain  quantity  of 
new  land  every  two  years,  surrendering  the  other  to  the  owner,  for  the  planting 
of  grain. 


PIETER  ANDRIESSEN'S  FARM  165 


East  River  shore,  generally  known  some  years  ago  as  Ravens- 
wood,  extended  about  half  a  mile  back  from  the  river  to  a 
small  stream  called  in  later  times  Sunswick  Creek,  which  is 
yet  to  be  seen  flowing  through  a  narrow  salt  meadow.  The 
site  of  the  farmhouse  here  was  nearly  opposite  the  foot  of 
the  present  Fifty-fifth  Street  on  Manhattan  Island.  Pieter 
Andriessen,  however,  had  an  additional  occupation  to  that 
of  a  farmer ;  he  was  a  chimney-sweep,  —  an  employment  of 
considerable  importance  in  those  days  of  wood  fires  and  of 
thatched  roofs,  —  and  from  that  fact  he  was  commonly 
known  in  the  town  as  Pieter  de  Schoorsteenveger.  As  this 
occupation  of  Pieter  must  have  necessitated  his  frequent 
attendance  in  the  town,  and  as  he  does  not  appear  to  have 
married  till  a  comparatively  late  day,  he  seems  to  have  been 
in  the  habit  of  shifting  his  quarters  backward  and  forward 
between  his  house  on  Hoogh  Straet  and  his  plantation  on 
Long  Island,  as  occasion  might  require.  Neither  of  these 
establishments  was  on  a  very  magnificent  scale,  it  is  probable, 
and  the  farm  on  Long  Island  seems  to  have  been  tenanted  by 
several  negro  slaves  of  Andriessen. 

In  1648,  Pieter  Andriessen  appears  in  the  list  of  tavern- 
keepers  in  the  settlement.  As,  however,  his  house  upon 
Hoogh  Straet  was  directly  opposite  the  "  Great  Tavern  "  of 
the  West  India  Company  (afterwards  the  Town  House),  it  is 
hardly  probable  that  he  would  have  been  permitted  to  main- 
tain a  tavern  there,  and  he  is  much  more  likely  to  have  kept 
liquor  upon  tap  at  his  Long  Island  farm,  to  accommodate  his 
few  neighbors  and  their  workmen,  as  well  as  the  wood- 
cutters, quarrymen,  and  boatmen  whose  employment  called 
them  up  and  down  along  the  East  River. 

In  September,  1655,  after  the  outbreak  of  the  Indian 
troubles  of  that  year,  there  was  a  general  flight  to  New 
Amsterdam  of  the  panic-stricken  settlers  who  had  survived 
the  first  onslaught  of  the  Indians.  Hastily  throwing  their 
personal  effects  into  the  boats  with  which  most  of  them  were 
provided  as  means  of  conveyance,  and  turning  loose  into  the 
woods  the  cattle,  which  in  general  they  could  not  remove, 


166     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


they  abandoned  their  exposed  plantations,  and  with  their 
families  took  refuge  under  the  guns  of  Fort  Amsterdam. 

Unlike  the  Indian  attacks  of  1643-44,  that  of  1655  was 
directed,  in  many  instances,  not  so  much  to  murder  and  to 
general  devastation,  as  to  securing  captives  for  the  sake  of  a 
ransom.  In  this  way  the  abandoned  plantations  were  often 
spared,  in  the  hope  apparently  of  entrapping  the  colonists. 

Four  weeks  had  gone  by  since  the  first  attack  by  the 
Indians,  when  Pieter  Andriessen  determined  to  take  a  party 
out  to  his  plantation  on  Long  Island,  in  order  to  try  to  re- 
cover some  of  his  cattle.  The  party,  consisting  of  Andriessen 
and  five  others,  sailed  up  the  East  River  one  October  morning, 
and  finding  nothing  to  alarm  them,  landed  at  Andriessen's 
farm,  and  set  about  scouring  the  neighboring  woods  and 
thickets  for  the  animals.  The  Dutch,  however,  had  been 
discovered  by  a  party  of  Indians,  who,  to  the  number  of 
about  thirty,  set  upon  them  and  took  them  all  prisoners. 
Sending  two  of  their  captives  back  to  New  Amsterdam,  with 
a  statement  of  what  the  captors  required  in  the  way  of  cloth, 
lead,  gunpowder,  kettles,  guns,  knives,  shoes,  axes,  etc.,  — 
as  a  ransom,  —  the  savages  retained  Andriessen  and  three  of 
his  companions  as  their  prisoners,  all  but  one  of  these  being 
wounded.  As,  however,  Andriessen's  party  had  left  the 
town  without  the  knowledge  and  consent  of  the  military 
authorities,  and  indeed  against  an  express  prohibition,  the 
Director  and  Council,  after  much  discussion  of  the  case, 
declined  to  act  for  various  reasons,  one  of  which  was  "  be- 
cause when  the  other  savages,  who  keep  yet  seventy- three 
prisoners  of  our  nation,  understood  that  such  an  extravagant 
ransom  1  has  been  paid  for  four,  they  would  demand  a  more 
enormous  sum."  Andriessen  and  his  comrades,  therefore, 
remained  in  the  hands  of  the  savages  for  a  while  longer ;  but 
within  a  couple  of  weeks,  —  apparently  stimulated  by  the 
threat  of  the  Indians,  to  carry  the  remaining  captives  into  the 
interior  of  the  country  —  the  authorities  at  New  Amsterdam 

1  The  value  of  the  goods  required  may  have  amounted  to  $150  or  $200  of 
the  present  currency. 


DE  RUYTER'S  CHICKEN  EXPEDITION  167 


came  to  an  agreement  with  the  natives  respecting  the  amount 
of  ransom,  and  most  or  all  of  the  prisoners  were  restored. 

Matters,  however,  remained  in  a  very  unsettled  condition, 
in  spite  of  the  apparent  settlement  with  the  Indians;  and 
frequent  reports  of  depredations  in  the  vicinity  of  New 
Amsterdam  (of  which  the  natives  generally  disclaimed  any 
knowledge),  kept  the  community  in  a  constant  state  of  uncer- 
tainty and  dread.  While  things  were  in  this  state,  there 
sat,  on  the  night  of  the  4th  of  November  of  this  year,  1655, 
around  a  blazing  fire  on  the  wide  kitchen  hearth  of  Pieter 
Andriessen's  rough  farmhouse  near  the  East  River  shore,  his 
negro  slave  Stephen,  and  a  crony  of  the  latter,  Captain 
Francis  Fyn's  negro  man,  who  had  rowed  across  from  his 
master's  farmhouse  on  Varcken  (now  Blackwell's)  Island, 
for  a  social  evening.  With  this  pair  of  worthies  was  Claes  de 
Ruyter,  a  Dutchman  of  jovial  disposition  from  New  Amster- 
dam, who  is  understood  to  have  been  a  former  trooper  in  the 
West  India  Company's  service.  The  negro  Stephen  had 
evidently  been  sent  to  take  charge  of  his  master's  property, 
either  because  he  ran  comparatively  little  risk  of  being  car- 
ried off  by  the  Indians,  or  because  Pieter  Andriessen  himself 
was  not  yet  recovered  from  the  effects  of  his  late  encounter 
with  the  savages.  The  presence  of  Claes  de  Ruyter,  how- 
ever, at  this  time  and  place,  is  not  susceptible  of  so  easy  an 
explanation. 

Rations  seem  to  have  been  rather  scanty  with  the  party  at 
Pieter  Andriessen's  house;  the  keen  autumn  air  had  given 
them  sharp  appetites;  and  as  the  long  evening  wore  away, 
some  one  —  we  will  suppose  it  was  Stephen  —  remembered 
that  there  were  some  chickens  left  upon  the  farm  of  the 
nearest  neighbor,  Joris  Stevensen  de  Caper.  The  trio 
promptly  agreed  that  these  fowls  ought  not  to  be  left  for 
the  Indians,  or  for  wolves,  wild-cats,  and  foxes,  and  an  expe- 
dition was  determined  upon  to  recover  some,  at  least,  of 
them.  A  walk  of  about  a  mile,  over  rough  pasture-fields, 
and  through  woods  and  thickets,  brought  the  party  in  sight 
of  the  low  farmhouse  of  Joris  Stevensen.    This  house,  of 


168     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


which  all  vestiges  have  long  ago  disappeared,  was  situated 
on  the  edge  of  the  salt  marshes  nearly  half  a  mile  east  of  the 
present  Queens  County  Court  House  in  Long  Island  City,  — 
just  where  De  Caper,  or  "the  sailor,"  could  bring  his  market- 
boat  almost  to  the  door  of  his  house  by  sailing  up  a  small 
creek  called  Canapaukah,  a  branch  of  the  Mespat  Kill,  or 
present  Newtown  Creek.  Joris  Stevensen's  family  had 
abandoned  their  exposed  dwelling,  as  had  most  of  the 
farmers'  families  in  the  country,  but  the  men  came  to  the 
farm  occasionally  to  attend  to  necessary  work.  To  guard 
against  any  interference  by  possible  inmates  of  the  house, 
the  marauding  party  commenced  operations  by  a  vigorous 
battering  against  the  door  of  the  house,  accompanied  by  a 
whole  storm  of  blood-curdling  yells  and  war-whoops,  in 
which  we  may  suppose  that  Claes  de  Ruyter,  who  was 
familiar  with  the  Indians,  and  who  often  acted  as  go-between 
for  them  and  for  the  whites,  bore  a  prominent  part.  The 
expedition  was,  in  short,  entirely  successful,  and  Claes  and 
his  companions  returned  to  Pieter  Andriessen's  farmhouse, 
where  they  calmly  proceeded  to  pluck  and  to  dress  their 
plunder. 

In  the  mean  time  the  Joris  Stevensen  farm  had  not  been 
entirely  deserted.  That  individual  himself,  together  with 
his  father-in-law,  Harmen  Hendricksen,  and  one  Teunis 
Jansen  van  Commel,  had  been  engaged  during  the  day  in 
threshing  out  some  grain,  and  at  night  had  disposed  them- 
selves to  sleep  in  the  barn.  Scared  almost  out  of  their  wits 
by  the  supposed  Indian  attack,  and  fearing  to  be  discovered 
or  burned  in  the  barn,  they  had  escaped  into  the  night  and 
sought  places  of  concealment  for  themselves  in  various 
directions.  One  of  the  fugitives  made  his  way  across  the 
fields  to  the  house  of  his  neighbor  Andriessen;  here  he  dis- 
covered a  light,  and  approaching  carefully  to  reconnoitre,  he 
heard,  to  his  great  joy,  some  conversation  in  Dutch;  there- 
upon he  boldly  entered  the  house,  where  his  appearance  was 
about  as  agreeable  to  Claes  de  Ruyter  and  the  negroes  as  was 
that  of  Banquo's  ghost  to  Macbeth  in  the  banqueting  hall 


BURNING  OF  JACOB  HAES'S  HOUSE  169 


at  the  palace  of  Fores.  The  party  had,  in  fact,  just  spitted 
Joris  Stevensen's  fowls,  and  were  caught  red-handed.  Claes 
was  profuse  in  his  apologies,  expatiated  on  the  desperation 
of  starving  men,  promised  to  pay  for  the  fowls  when  he 
returned  to  town,  and  incidentally  suggested  that  it  was 
not  necessary  to  say  anything  about  a  trilling  matter  of  this 
kind. 

News  of  this  affair  found  its  way  to  New  Amsterdam, 
however,  and  produced  a  considerable  effect  upon  the  author- 
ities there,  for  it  showed  them  that  other  agencies  besides  the 
Indians  might  be  at  work  keeping  up  the  state  of  disorder  in 
the  country.  While  this  occurrence  was  yet  fresh,  on  the 
morning  of  the  8th  of  November,  1655,  the  people  of  New 
Amsterdam  were  again  excited  by  a  spectacle  which  had  been 
too  common  during  the  preceding  few  weeks,  —  a  column  of 
smoke  rising  above  the  woods  from  some  burning  building 
along  the  East  River  shore.  The  precise  location  of  the  fire 
was  not  determinable  from  the  town,  but  soon  news  arrived 
from  up  the  river  that  it  was  the  farmhouse  of  Jacob  Haes, 
situated  beyond  the  Noormans  Kill,  on  the  shore  of  what  is 
now  called  Green  Point.  On  this  same  morning,  Director- 
General  Stuyvesant,  with  Nicasius  de  Sille,  one  of  the  mem- 
bers of  his  Council,  appeared  before  the  court  of  burgomasters 
in  the  Town  Hall  with  a  request,  which  was  duly  entered 
upon  the  minutes  of  that  body,  "that  the  fiscal  rigidly 
examine  Teunis  Jansen  as  to  what  he  saw  at  the  house 
of  Pieter  Schoorsteenveger ;  whereas,  now  Jacob  Haey's 
house  is  burning,  and  it  might  possibly  happen  in  the  same 
manner." 

An  examination  into  the  late  pranks  of  Claes  de  Ruyter 
followed,  accordingly,  but  we  do  not  find  that  it  threw  any 
light  upon  the  later  affair,  and  the  matter  seems  to  have  been 
dropped  without  any  further  proceedings.  Stuyvesant  and 
his  Council  were  determined,  however,  to  prevent  troubles 
of  this  sort  in  future;  and  upon  the  18th  of  January,  1656, 
followed  the  famous  "Order  against  Isolated  Plantations," 
commanding  all  the  subjects  of  the  Colony  to  settle  close  to 


170     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


one  another  in  villages,  neighborhoods,  and  hamlets,  by  the 
following  spring,  imposing  a  penalty  upon  such  persons  as 
remain  upon  exposed  plantations,  and  giving  them  notice 
that  they  must  not  expect  any  aid  from  the  authorities  in 
case  of  trouble  with  the  natives.  Four  years  later,  in  fact, 
owing  to  frequent  disregard  of  the  ordinance,  notice  was 
given  by  the  Council  to  farmers  still  living  upon  isolated 
farms,  to  pull  down  their  houses,  and  it  is  believed  that  a 
few  houses  were  actually  destroyed  under  the  orders  of  the 
authorities,  before  the  surrender  to  the  English,  in  1664, 
rendered  the  ordinance  of  the  Council  obsolete. 

After  these  proceedings  of  the  Council,  there  is  room  to 
suppose  that  Pieter  Andriessen  became,  for  a  time  at  least, 
a  permanent  resident  of  his  house  on  Hoogh  Straet.  He 
married,  in  1661,  Geertruyd  Samsens,  a  widow,  and  we  find 
that  in  1664  he  had  a  daughter,  Jannetje,  baptized  in  the 
Dutch  Church ;  but  in  1668  it  appears  that  both  he  and  his 
wife  had  died,  and  two  years  later  the  Hoogh  Straet  house 
was  sold,  by  the  representatives  of  her  estate,  to  Barent 
Coersen. 

Next  adjoining  the  house  of  Pieter  Andriessen  upon  the 
east,  in  a  garden  of  nearly  seventy-five  feet  front  upon 
Hoogh  Straet,  stood  at  the  time  of  our  survey  the  dwelling- 
house  of  Jacob  van  Couwenhoven,  previously  alluded  to,1 
which  was  sold  in  the  following  year  to  Nicholas  de  Meyer. 
This  building  was  of  stone,  and  of  much  greater  pretensions 
than  most  of  its  neighbors,  for  at  its  sale  to  De  Meyer,  which 
was  at  public  auction,  it  was  already  mortgaged  for  about 
3500  guilders,  or  $1400  of  the  present  currency;  it  stood 
upon  the  site  of  the  present  buildings,  No.  47,  and  a  part  of 
No.  45  Stone  Street.  This  house  was  occupied  as  a  residence 
for  more  than  thirty  years  by  Nicholas  de  Meyer.  He  was 
from  Hamburg,  then  claimed  to  be  under  the  jurisdiction  of 
the  Duchy  of  Holstein,  from  which  cause  he  was  occasionally 
called  by  the  Dutch  of  New  Amsterdam,  Nicolaas  van  Hol- 

1  See  ante,  p.  146. 


Stone  Street. 
Looking  towards  Hanover  Square.    The  ancient  Hoogh  Straet. 


NICHOLAS  DE  MEYER 


171 


steyn.  The  ordinary  appellation  of  De  Meyer  (that  is,  the 
"steward"  or  "farmer")  seems,  however,  to  have  been 
preferred  by  Nicholas  and  his  descendants,  and  became  the 
family  name.  Nicholas  had  married,  in  1655,  Luda,  or 
Lydia,  daughter  of  the  ex-fiscal,  or  prosecutor,  Hendrick 
van  Dyke;  he  became,  in  later  years,  a  man  of  considerable 
prominence  in  the  city,  having  been  one  of  the  magistrates 
in  1664,  at  the  time  of  the  surrender  to  the  English.  After- 
wards, in  1676,  he  was  mayor  of  the  city.  He  was  a  man 
of  active  business  interests  and  took  a  considerable  part  in 
developing  the  settlement  of  the  village  of  Haerlem,  where  he 
had  purchased  various  parcels  of  land  amounting  to  between 
sixty  and  seventy  acres  in  extent;  he  also  owned  a  wind-mill 
near  the  intersection  of  the  present  Chatham  and  Duane 
streets,  and  a  brewery  in  the  Smits  VJy,  or  modern  Pearl 
Street,  near  Piatt  Street.  After  the  death  of  Nicholas  de 
Meyer,  in  1690,  the  property  upon  Stone  Street  was  divided, 
and  the  original  homestead  passed  to  his  daughter  Anna 
Catrina,  wife  of  Jan  Willemsen  Noering.  The  eldest  son 
of  Nicholas,  Wilhelmus  or  William  de  Meyer,  became  a 
prominent  citizen  of  Esopus  and  Kingston  in  the  present 
county  of  Ulster. 

As  we  advance  along  the  road,  or  "High  Street,"  farther 
eastwards  from  the  fort,  the  plots  granted  to  settlers  become 
larger,  for  they  were  given  at  a  time  when  there  was  no 
immediate  likelihood  of  a  demand  for  the  land  for  the  con- 
struction of  dwellings.  In  this  way,  Wessell  Evertsen,  the 
next  neighbor  to  Van  Couwenhoven  and  to  Nicholas  de 
Meyer,  obtained  in  1646  the  grant  of  a  parcel  of  land  with  a 
frontage  of  nearly  two  hundred  and  twenty-five  feet  along  the 
road,  and  extending  back  to  the  Slyck  Steegh.  Evertsen 
came  from  the  old  town  of  Naerden,  upon  the  south  coast 
of  the  Zuyder  Zee,  some  thirteen  or  fourteen  miles  east  of 
Amsterdam,  —  an  interesting  place,  with  many  a  tradition 
of  Spanish  atrocities  perpetrated  here  in  the  war  for  inde- 
pendence; a  picturesque  spot,  too,  where  the  flat  western 


172     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


coast  of  the  Zuyder  Zee,  and  the  interminable  dyked 
meadows  in  the  direction  of  Amsterdam,  give  place  to  the 
heights  of  Gooiland;  and  where,  to  the  observer  gazing 
southeastward,  — 

"  A  brighter,  livelier  scene  succeeds  ; 
In  groups  the  scattering  wood  recedes, 
Hedge-rows,  and  huts,  and  sunny  meads, 
And  corn-fields  glance  between,"  — 

till  he  might  well  imagine  himself  among  the  fields  of 
Kent  or  of  Essex,  rather  than  in  a  corner  of  the  province 
of  Holland. 

Having  come  to  New  Amsterdam,  Evertsen  married,  in 
1643,  Geertje  Bouwhens,  a  young  woman  from  his  old  home, 
and  had  probably  built  upon  his  plot  on  Hoogh  Straet,  as 
early  as  1645,  a  year  or  so  before  he  obtained  his  ground- 
brief.  He  was  a  seafaring  man,  and  in  1648  is  spoken  of 
as  "late  master  of  the  yacht  Saint  Martin;"  but  his  main 
occupation,  which  he  followed  for  many  years  at  New 
Amsterdam,  was  that  of  a  fisherman,  and  from  his  house, 
which,  adjoining  a  capacious  garden,  stood  about  upon  the 
site  of  the  present  building,  No.  55  Stone  Street,  a  path  or 
lane,  which  remained  open  for  many  years,  led  down  directly 
to  the  mooring-place  of  his  boats  upon  the  East  River  shore. 
A  couple  of  hundred  feet  to  the  west  of  this  last-mentioned 
spot  was  the  tall  building  of  the  city  tavern,  for  the  bright 
lights  of  which  Wessell  Evertsen  had  doubtless  often  strained 
his  eyes,  sailing  up  the  bay,  belated  on  his  fishing  trips,  — 
much  as  he  might  have  watched,  at  home  in  the  fatherland, 
for  the  lights  of  the  historic  Castle  of  Muyden  on  the  Zuyder 
Zee,  as  he  ran  up,  on  dark  nights,  from  Amsterdam  to 
Naerden,  through  the  broad  channel  of  the  Pampus. 

Here,  then,  upon  Hoogh  Straet,  Wessell  Evertsen  lived 
for  many  years,  and  saw  a  large  family  grow  up  around  him. 
The  extreme  eastern  end  of  his  plot  of  ground  he  had  sold 
as  early  as  1649  to  one  Rut  Jacobsen,  but  he  retained  the 
balance  of  it  till  about  1657,  when  the  increasing  demand  for 


ELLIOTT'S  ALLEY 


173 


building  lots  in  the  town  induced  him  to  sell  one  small  parcel 
after  another,  till  in  the  course  of  five  or  six  years  he  had 
disposed  of  all  the  ground  except  that  in  the  immediate 
vicinity  of  his  dwelling-house.  Evertsen  appears  to  have 
died  shortly  before  1670,  but  the  place  remained  in  the  pos- 
session of  his  descendants  as  late  as  the  year  172G. 

The  parcel  of  land  just  before  alluded  to  as  forming  the 
eastern  end  of  Wessell  Evertsen's  grant,  and  as  having  been 
sold  by  him  in  1649  to  Rutger  (commonly  known  as  Rut) 
Jacobsen,  must  have  been  built  upon  by  the  latter  at  about 
the  period  named,  and  it  was  doubtless  at  the  same  time 
that  the  narrow  lane  bounding  it  upon  the  west,  and  which 
formed  the  southerly  turn  to  the  Slyck  Steegh,  was  laid  out. 
This  passageway,  under  the  name  of  Mill  Lane,  is  still  to  be 
seen  opening  into  Stone  Street,  as  was  previously  noticed;1 
and  the  site  of  Jacobsen's  plot  is  at  present  occupied  by  a 
low  but  spacious  brick  building  of  two  stories,  conspicuous 
for  its  large  windows,  and  occupied  by  the  Board  of  Marine 
Underwriters.  The  entrance  to  this  structure  is  upon  South 
William  Street,  where  was  originally  the  rear  of  Jacobsen's 
premises.  As  for  the  passageway  now  called  Mill  Lane,  and 
sometimes  Mill  Street,  it  was  known  for  a  time,  about  the  end 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  as  Ellet's  or  Elliott's  Alley,  from 
Richard  Elliott,  previously  mentioned  (ante,  page  160,  note), 
who  lived  just  at  its  head  upon  the  Slyck  Steegh.  Rutger 
Jacobsen,  at  the  time  of  his  purchase  of  this  property  upon 
Hoogh  Straet,  was  a  resident  of  Rensselaerswyck 2  (now 
Albany),  and  although  he  undoubtedly  resided  at  times  in 
New  Amsterdam,  he  does  not  appear  to  have  given  up  his  citi- 
zenship at  the  former  place,  for  in  1656  he  was  one  of  the  mag- 
istrates of  Rensselaerswyck,  and  as  such,  in  that  year,  he  laid 
the  corner-stone  of  the  new  Dutch  Church,  the  site  of  which 
was  at  the  intersection  of  the  present  State  Street  and  Broad- 

1  See  ante,  page  153. 

2  Jacobsen  came  from  Schoonrewoerd  in  the  Netherlands,  a  village  some 
twelve  English  miles  south  of  Utrecht.  His  daughter  Margrietje  married,  in 
1667,  Jan  Jansen  Bleecker,  from  Meppel  in  the  province  of  Overyssel,  ancestor  of 
the  Bleecker  family,  well  known  in  the  annals  of  New  York. 


174     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


way,  in  the  city  of  Albany.  The  house  at  New  Amsterdam 
was  retained  by  Jacobsen  till  the  fall  of  1660,  when  it  was  sold 
at  public  auction  to  one  Johannes  Withart.  It  would  seem  to 
have  been  used  by  Rut  Jacobsen  either  as  a  place  of  tempo- 
rary residence  for  himself  and  family  when  in  New  Amster- 
dam, or  as  a  storehouse  connected  with  the  North  River 
trade,  he  having  been,  as  early  as  1649,  the  owner  of  a 
sloop  plying  upon  the  Hudson  between  Rensselaerswyck  and 
New  Amsterdam.  After  Withart  these  premises  came  to  be 
noted  as  the  residence  of  Nicholas  Bayard,  long  conspicuous 
in  the  affairs  of  the  city,  mayor  in  1685,  the  deadly  personal 
enemy  of  Jacob  Leisler,  and  the  man  above  all  others  respon- 
sible for  the  judicial  murder  of  Leisler  and  his  son-in-law 
Milborne  in  1691;  bold  and  turbulent,  he  pitted  himself 
against  the  Earl  of  Bellomont,  Governor  of  the  Colony,  was 
himself  condemned  to  death  for  treason,  and  very  narrowly 
escaped  Leisler's  fate.  His  large  farm  and  country  seat  west 
of  the  Bowery  became  one  of  the  prominent  features  of  New 
York  in  the  eighteenth  century.  He  purchased  the  house 
upon  Stone  Street  from  Johannes  Withart  in  1685,  the  year 
of  his  mayoralty,  but  had  resided  in  it  for  a  number  of 
years  before  that  period. 


CHAPTER  XV 


THE  "GREAT  TAVERN,"  AFTERWARDS  THE  TOWN  HALL.  — 
ITS  HISTORICAL  AND  POLITICAL  ASSOCIATIONS.  —  DOM- 
INIE BOGARDUS'S  PARTY.  — THE  COURTS.— THE  SHIRT 
CASE.— GOVERNOR  LOVELACE'S  TAVERN 


The  Taverner  tooke  me  by  the  sieve, 

"  Sr"  sayth  he,  "  will  you  or  wyne  assay  ?  " 

I  answerd,  "  that  cau  not  mutch  me  greve 
A  peny  cau  do  no  more  than  it  may; " 
I  dranke  a  pynt,  and  for  it  dyd  pay, 

Yet  sore  a  hungred  fro  thence  I  yede,  — 

A  ud  wantyuge  my  mony  I  cold  not  spede. 


iHE  traveller,  in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century, 


\_  approaching  Amsterdam  up  the  broad  estuary  of  the 
Y,  from  the  Zuyder  Zee,  and  rounding  a  point  of  flat  meadow- 
land  intersected  by  canals,  where  some  years  later  the  vast 
dock-yards,  timber  wharves,  and  storehouses  of  the  Admi- 
ralty and  of  the  East  India  Company  arose,  saw  at  his  left 
hand,  stretching  for  two  miles  along  the  shore,  the  array  of 
houses  of  that  famed  city,  broken  here  and  there  by  canals,  the 
mouths  of  which  were  occasionally  marked  by  ancient  stone 
towers  of  quaint  form,  the  survivors  of  the  bulwarks  of  former 
days.  At  a  distance  of  a  few  hundred  feet  from  the  shore 
extended  an  apparently  interminable  double  line  of  "  booms," 
—  stout  piles  driven  into  the  earth  and  fastened  together  at 
the  tops  by  string  pieces,  and  to  these  were  moored  an  almost 
countless  host  of  vessels  of  all  descriptions,  — 


the  smaller  craft  only  were  permitted  to  pass  within  the  line 
of  booms.    Sailing  by  the  mouth  of  the  broad  Amstel  River, 


Lydgate  :  "  London  Lyckpeny.' 


"  Meer  vloten  als  besit  de  iveerclt,  op  het  Y ; 


176     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


crowded  with  boats  and  barges,  as  it  flowed  placidly  through 
the  heart  of  the  city,  and  passing  the  Haaring  pakkers  Tooren, 
—  the  Herring-packers'  Tower,  —  where  it  stood  guard  over 
the  entrance  to  the  canal,  called  the  "  Cingel,"  the  voyager  saw 
before  him  a  long  pier  running  out  from  the  shore  to  a  point 
beyond  the  line  of  booms ;  at  its  extremity  was  a  large,  high- 
peaked  wooden  building,  constructed  upon  piles,  moored 
around  which  was  a  swarm  of  yachts  and  rowboats  of  vari- 
ous descriptions.  This  building  was  the  Stadts  Herbergh,  or 
City  Tavern  of  Amsterdam;  it  had  been  built  in  the  early 
part  of  the  seventeenth  century,  to  furnish  lodging  and  enter- 
tainment to  seafaring  men,  and  to  travellers  who  might  arrive 
in  the  city  by  night-coming  vessels,  or  after  the  closing  of  the 
land  gates.  The  commodious  quarters  afforded  by  this  tavern, 
and  its  agreeable  outlook  over  the  land  and  water,  caused  it  to 
be  held  in  high  repute. 

About  the  year  1640,  when  the  trade  of  New  Amsterdam 
was  already  considerably  extended,  it  was  thought  desirable, 
by  the  officers  of  the  West  India  Company,  to  afford  better 
accommodations  for  strangers  in  the  town  than  were  furnished 
by  the  small  and  rude  taverns  which  already  existed  there. 
It  was  decided  to  establish,  somewhat  after  the  pattern  of 
Amsterdam,  a  Stadts  Herbergh,  or  City  Tavern,  under  the 
auspices  of  the  West  India  Company.  This  building  was  a 
substantial  edifice  of  stone,  and  was  completed  during  the 
year  1641.  It  was  designedly  placed  in  a  very  conspicuous 
position  near  the  shore  of  the  East  River,  which  one  of  its  sides 
faced,  and  at  the  time  of  its  erection  it  formed  a  most  promi- 
nent landmark,  standing  entirely  apart  from  the  houses  of  the 
town.  Back  of  it  lay  the  road,  or  Hoogh  Straet,  from  which 
a  lane  or  passageway  on  the  east  side  of  the  building  gave 
access  to  the  open  space  between  it  and  the  shore.  This  lane, 
after  the  City  Tavern  had  become,  in  1654,  the  Stadt  Huys,  or 
Town  Hall,  was  frequently  spoken  of,  in  English  times,  as 
the  "  State  House  Lane,"  or  "  Hall  Lane ; "  it  exists  at  the 
present  day  as  the  narrow  passageway,  known  as  Coenties 
Alley,  a  curious  little  dark  street  between  high  and  almost 


THE  STADTS  HERBERGH 


177 


blank  walls ;  it  is  overhung  by  rusty  fire-escapes,  and  furnished 
with  miniature  sidewalks,  of  about  two  feet  wide. 

The  original  ground-plot  attached  to  the  City  Tavern, 
appears  to  have  been  a  strip  about  fifty  feet  in  width,  extend- 
ing from  Hoogh  Straet  to  the  East  River  shore,  but  in  the 
year  1651,  upon  the  confiscation  of  the  adjoining  land  of 
Cornells  Melyn,1  enough  of  that  land  appears  to  have  been 
added  to  the  tavern  plot  to  make  the  whole  parcel  about  one 
hundred  and  five  feet  in  front  upon  the  shore,  and  a  few  feet 
less  than  that  distance  upon  Hoogh  Straet.  The  premises,  so 
enlarged,  seem  to  have  been  then  surrounded  by  a  fence ;  pre- 
viously, they  had  been  open  and  unenclosed.  The  additional 
ground  was  doubtless  used  for  a  time  for  garden  purposes.2 

Collating  carefully  the  various  deeds  for  portions  of  these 
premises,  made  from  time  to  time  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
after  the  Town  House  had  ceased  to  be  used  for  public  pur- 
poses.—  some  of  which  deeds  refer  expressly  to  lines  of  the 
old  building,  while  other  dimensions  of  the  latter  result  from 
well-known  principles  of  architecture,  —  the  conclusion  is 
reached  that  the  ground-plan  of  the  City  Tavern  must  have 
been  about  forty-two  feet  front3  by  about  thirty-two  feet  in 
depth;  in  height  it  contained  two  stories,  with  a  basement 
underneath  and  spacious  lofts  above.4  In  the  rear  of  the 
building  was  an  extension  or  addition,  of  which  only  the 
eastern  wall  is  definitely  fixed ;  this  appears  to  have  been  a 
long,  narrow  structure  used  for  kitchen  purposes,  and  prob- 
ably containing  other  offices  of  a  similar  nature.  The  present 
northerly  line  of  Pearl  Street  would  seem  to  have  encroached 
somewhat  upon  the  site  of  the  City  Tavern,  as  will  be  seen 
from  the  accompanying  plan. 

1  See  ante,  page  120. 

2  Minutes  of  the  Burgomasters,  15  November,  1658.  On  Johannes  Nevius, 
the  secretary's  petition,  wherein  he  requests  that  lie  may  plant  the  garden  behind 
the  Town  Hall,  —  Ordered,  that  the  petitioner  may  plant  the  garden,  in  conjunc- 
tion with  the  court  messenger. 

3  That  is  to  say,  its  later  front  upon  what  is  now  Pearl  Street ;  its  original 
front  was  towards  the  west. 

*  Under  its  steeply  pitched  roof. 

12 


178     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


The  Stadts  Herbergh  appears  to  have  been  opened  for  the 
entertainment  of  the  public  about  the  beginning  of  the  year 
1642,  Philip  Gerritsen  from  Haerlem  being  the  first  landlord,1 
and  the  premises  being  leased  to  him  and  afterwards  to 
Adriaen  Gerritsen  (who  had  married  Philip's  widow),  down 
to  the  beginning  of  the  year  1652,  when  we  find  Abraham 
Delanoy  conducting  the  tavern.  The  terms  of  the  lease 
were  sufficiently  liberal.  Philip  was  to  pay  the  company 
three  hundred  guilders  per  year,  or  about  $120  of  the  present 
currency;  he  was  to  sell  the  company's  wines  and  brandy 
only,  for  which  he  was  to  be  allowed  a  profit  of  six  stivers 
(about  twelve  cents)  per  quart,  the  company  agreeing  not  to 
allow  any  wines  to  be  sold  at  retail  out  of  its  cellar,  "  which 
might  be  drunk  in  clubs,  and  would  tend  to  the  lessee's 
injury."  The  Director-General,  at  the  same  time,  promised 
to  have  a  well  dug  near  the  house,  and  to  cause  a  brew-house 
to  be  put  up  in  the  rear  of  the  tavern  or  else  to  give  the  use 
of  the  company's  brew-house,  and  moreover  to  permit  a  space 
to  be  fenced  off  in  the  rear  of  the  house. 

The  City  Tavern  was  hardly  more  than  opened  before  it 
became  historic.  Many  of  the  fugitives  from  the  outlying 
settlements,  in  the  Indian  War  of  1643,  were  quartered  here. 
On  the  18th  of  September  of  that  year,  there  arrived  in  the 
town  the  distressed  colonists  of  Achter  Col  (near  the  present 
Elizabethport),  which  had  been  destroyed  on  the  preceding 
night  by  the  Indians.  These  people,  who  had  collected  in  a 
building  there,  managed  with  great  difficulty  to  make  their 
escape  in  a  canoe  after  the  house  in  which  they  were  gathered 
had  been  set  on  fire ;  they  kept  off  the  Indians  by  means  of 
their  firearms,  but  lost  everything  else.  They  were  lodged  in 
a  body  at  the  City  Tavern  at  the  expense  of  the  West  India 
Company. 

Here,  too,  in  the  beginning  of  1651,  was  quartered  the  crew 
of  the  ship  "  Nieuw  Nederlandsche  Fortuyn, "  —  the  vessel  of 
the  Baron  van  der  Capellen,  —  seized  and  confiscated  by  order 

1  Philip  Gerritsen's  lease  bears  date  February  17,  1643,  but  runs  from  the 
1st  of  January,  1642,  for  six  years. 


Plan  of  the  Stadt  Huys  or  Town 
Hall  of  New  Amsterdam 

Compiled  by  J.  H.  INNES 


Scale,  jo  feet  =  ]/2  inch 


References: 

a.  Main  building  of  the  Stadt  Huys. 

b.  Extension,  supposed  to  have  been  a  kitchen,  etc. 

c  c.  Small  lots  granted  by  the  Burgomasters,  1664 — 66. 

d.  Lane  or  Alley  to  the  Stadt  Huys  enclosure. 

e.  Site  of  tavern  built  by  Gov.  Lovelace,  16JO. 
f  f.  Present  line  of  Pearl  Street. 


THE  CITY  TAVERN  AND  ITS  ASSOCIATIONS  179 


of  Director-General  Stuyvesant ;  nominally,  on  account  of  an 
alleged  infraction  of  the  revenue  laws,  but  really  to  gratify 
his  hatred  against  Cornells  Melyn,  whom  he  believed  to  be 
a  partner  in  the  vessel,  —  for  which  proceeding  the  West 
India  Company  had  to  make  satisfaction  afterwards  in  the 
Netherlands.1 

The  tavern,  indeed,  from  an  early  day  was  in  frequent  use 
as  a  place  of  detention  for  suspected  persons  and  for  various 
political  or  other  prisoners.  For  this  purpose,  some  portion 
of  the  building  —  probably  a  part  of  its  basement  —  must 
have  been  specially  prepared.  Afterwards,  when  the  edifice 
came  to  be  the  Town  House,  a  part  of  it  was  used  as  one  of 
the  regular  prisons  of  the  town,  and  the  provost,  or  jailer, 
was  obliged  to  divide  his  attentions  between  the  prisoners 
confined  here  and  those  within  the  fort,  who  were  also  in  his 
charge. 

In  this  way  various  persons  who  had  become  obnoxious  to 
the  Director  and  his  Council  were  kept  in  detention  from 
time  to  time  at  the  City  Tavern,  and  later  at  the  Town 
House.  Here  was  kept  in  durance,  in  1647,  the  Scotchman 
Andrew  Forrester,  of  Dundee,  the  agent  of  the  Earl  of  Stirling, 
for  asserting  his  principal's  rights  to  Long  Island,  under  his 
purchase,  in  1629,  from  the  Plymouth  Company,  —  till  he 
was  packed  off  in  the  fall  of  that  year  to  the  Netherlands  to 
vindicate  his  conduct  before  the  States-General.  Here,  in 
1655,  the  Englishman,  George  Baxter,  was  confined:  he  had 
been  for  many  years  in  the  employ  of  the  Company  in  a 
military  capacity,  but  had  fallen  out  with  the  Director- Gen- 
eral and  Council,  and  had  attempted  to  raise  a  sedition  against 
the  Dutch  authorities  at  Gravesend.  To  the  Town  Hall,  in 
the  spring  of  1656,  were  marched  the  luckless  English  in- 
truders, twenty-three  in  number,  who  had  attempted,  under 
a  claim  hostile  to  the  Dutch,  to  make  a  settlement  at  the 
present  Westchester.  Sailing  up  the  East  River  in  his  ship, 
the  "  Weigh-Scales,"  Stuyvesant's  lieutenant,  "  the  valiant 
Captain  Frederick  de  Koninck,',  and  his  forces  proceeded  in 

1  See  ante,  page  119. 


180     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


boats  up  the  Westchester  Creek,  and  captured  the  entire  new 
colony,  which,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  who  were  left  to 
guard  their  wives,  children,  and  property,  he  conveyed  to  New 
Amsterdam,  where  they  were  lodged  in  what  they  call  "  a 
dungeon  at  the  Court  House  "  till  they  were  ready  to  comply 
with  the  demands  of  the  Dutch  authorities. 

Such  matters  as  these,  however,  did  not  interfere  with  the 
attractions  of  the  City  Tavern  as  a  social  resort,  and  it  soon 
came  to  be  patronized  by  many  of  the  better  class  of  citizens, 
and  by  the  officials  of  the  West  India  Company,  who  fre- 
quently made  up  parties  for  a  supper  and  a  social  evening 
there.  These  were  not  always  free  from  unpleasant  occur- 
rences, as  we  learn.  On  the  night  of  the  15th  of  March,  1644, 
there  were  gathered  in  Philip  Gerritsen's  parlor  in  the  City 
Tavern,  Doctor  Hans  Kiersted,  Dominie  Bogardus,  Nicholaus 
Coorn,  Jan  Jacobsen,  Gysbert  Opdyck,1  and  other  persons, 
with  their  wives,  spending  —  so  we  are  told  —  a  very  agree- 
able evening  together.  How  this  gathering  was  put  to  flight 
by  the  swashbuckler,  Captain  John  Underbill,  is  told  by  sev- 
eral of  the  parties  present :  "  About  an  hour  after  supper  there 
came  in  John  Onderhil,  with  his  lieutenant  Baxter,  and 
drummer,  to  whom  the  above-named  Philip  Gerritsen  said, 
'  Friends,  I  have  invited  these  persons  here,  with  their  wives  ; 
I  therefore  request  that  you  will  betake  yourselves  to  another 
room,  where  you  can  be  furnished  with  wine  for  money.' 
They  finally  did  so,  after  many  words.  Having  been  gone 
a  short  time,  said  Onderhil  and  his  company,  who  had  then 
been  joined  by  Thomas  Willet,  invited  some  of  our  company 
to  take  a  drink  with  them,  which  was  done.  George  Baxter, 
by  Onderhil's  orders,  came  and  requested  that  Opdyke  would 
come  and  join  them,  —  which  he  refused.  Thereupon  he,  On- 
derhil and  his  companions  broke  into  pieces,  with  drawn  swords, 
the  cans  which  hung  on  the  shelf  in  the  tavern ;  endeavoring 
by  force,  having  drawn  swords  in  their  hands,  to  come  into 
the  room  where  the  invited  guests  were.    This  was  for  a  long 

1  Commissary  at  the  South  or  Delaware  River  settlements,  and  original 
grantee  of  Coney  Island. 


DOMINIE  BOGARDUS'S  PARTY  181 


time  resisted  by  the  landlady,  with  a  leaden  bolt,  and  by  the 
landlord,  by  keeping  the  door  shut ;  but  finally  John  Onder- 
hil  and  his  associates,  in  spite  of  all  opposition,  came  into 
the  room,  where  he  uttered  many  words.  Captain  Onderhil, 
holding  his  sword  in  his  hand  and  the  scabbard  in  his  left 
hand,  —  the  blade  about  a  foot  out  of  the  scabbard,  —  said  to 
the  minister,  as  reported,  whilst  he  grasped  his  sword :  4  Clear 
out  of  here,  for  I  shall  strike  at  random ! '  In  like  manner, 
some  English  soldiers  came  immediately  (as  we  presume,  to 
his  assistance),  the  above  named  Onderhil  being  then  guilty, 
with  his  companions,  of  gross  insolence."  The  uproar  now 
assumed  larger  proportions,  and  the  fiscal,  or  public  prose- 
cutor, and  a  guard  from  the  fort  were  sent  for,  without  their 
presence  producing  much  effect  on  the  drunken  Englishmen. 
The  latter  still  refused  to  withdraw  from  the  scene  of  festiv- 
ity; and  it  was  presumably  in  reply  to  an  admonition  of 
Dominie  Bogardus,  coupled  with  a  suggestion  of  sending  for 
the  Director-General  himself,  that  Underhill  said  to  the 
Minister,  as  deposed  to  by  the  witnesses :  "  If  the  Director 
come  here,  't  is  well.  I  had  rather  speak  to  a  wise  man  than 
a  fool."  This  irreverent  reply  seems  to  have  taken  all  the 
spirit  from  the  guests.  "And  in  order  to  prevent  further 
and  more  serious  mischief,  —  yea,  even  bloodshed,"  say  the 
witnesses,  lugubriously,  "  we  broke  up  our  pleasant  party  be- 
fore we  had  intended." 

Indeed,  the  affrays  at  the  City  Tavern  were  not  always 
devoid  of  bloodshed.  In  1647,  one  Simon  Root  picked  a 
quarrel  and  fought  here  with  Pieter  Ebel,  the  jailer,  in  which 
the  former  had  the  misfortune  to  have  "  a  piece  of  his  ear " 
cut  off  by  a  cutlass  in  the  jailer's  hand.  Root  made  a  formal 
application  to  the  Director  and  Council  for  a  certificate  of 
this  fact,  which  was  granted  to  him,  —  presumably  for  the 
purpose  of  showing  that  the  injured  member  had  not  been 
"  cropped  "  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  justice. 

The  "Great  Tavern,"  some  time  before  it  became  the  Town 
Hall  of  New  Amsterdam,  had  come  to  be  the  seat  of  a  good 
deal  of  business  of  a  public  nature.    As  early  as  1647,  it 


182     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


was  one  of  the  three  places  in  which  all  public  notices  were 
posted,  the  others  being  the  fort,  and  the  barn  of  the  West 
India  Company.  Here,  too,  for  a  number  of  years,  the  Direc- 
tor and  Council  seem  to  have  frequently  sat  as  a  court  for 
the  trial  of  the  minor  cases  coming  before  them.  These  men 
were  often  not  exactly  legal  Solons,  and  the  cases  which  came 
before  them  were  not  infrequently  of  the  most  trivial  de- 
scription, for  they  had  to  deal  with  the  childish  squabbles  of 
sailors,  soldiers,  and  rude  and  ignorant  men  and  women  from 
half  the  countries  of  Europe,  for  the  latter  class  was  not  rare 
among  the  colonists.  The  fact  that  such  quarrels  had  to  be 
adjudicated  before  the  highest  legal  tribunal  of  the  colony, 
frequently  lends  a  humorous  character  to  the  proceedings,  of 
which  the  members  of  the  court  often  seem  to  be  aware  and 
which  shows  itself  in  their  decisions  far  more  than  does 
that  ponderous  gravity  upon  which  various  writers  have  been 
so  fond  of  expatiating.  The  great  Shirt  Case,  which  occupied 
the  attention  of  the  Director  and  his  Council,  in  August,  1646, 
may  serve  as  an  illustration  of  what  has  just  been  said.  In 
that  case,  one  Claes  Pietersen,  a  sailor,  proceeded  by  attach- 
ment process  to  recover  two  shirts,  in  the  possession  of  an- 
other sailor,  Jan  Jansen  from  Hoorn.  Upon  the  hearing,  the 
defendant  Jansen  protested,  rather  guardedly,  that  the  shirts 
resembled  some  he  had  bought  in  Holland.  The  court  de- 
cided that  as  they  had  never  discovered  any  fault  in  the  plaintiff 
Pietersen,  the  possession  of  the  shirts  should  be  given  to  him, 
and  that  if  the  defendant  could  not  prove  that  the  shirts  be- 
longed to  him,  he  should  remain  silent.  The  defendant  Jan- 
sen, not  being  satisfied  with  this  disposition  of  the  case,  then 
commenced  a  suit  against  Pietersen,  somewhat  in  the  nature 
of  an  equitable  bill  of  discovery,  to  compel  him  to  disclose 
where  he  got  the  shirts.  Pietersen's  answer  to  this  was  that 
he  purchased  the  shirts  at  Amsterdam,  but  was  unable  to  say 
in  what  street.  The  equities  of  this  important  matter  having 
been  duly  weighed  by  the  Council,  that  body  decided  that 
"they  find  not  a  particle  of  guilt  in  the  defendant;  where- 
fore the  plaintiff  is  commanded  to  keep  silent,  on  condition 


MEETING  OF  DELEGATES  183 


that  the  defendant,  when  he  goes  to  Holland,  and  shall  have 
arrived  at  Amsterdam,  remains  bound  to  point  out  the  shop 
where  he  bought  the  shirts" 

Matters  of  a  more  important  nature  sometimes  occupied 
the  attention  of  the  Director  and  Council.  Here,  in  the  fall 
and  winter  of  1653,  was  held  a  meeting  of  delegates  from 
the  Dutch  and  English  villages  around  New  Amsterdam,1 
for  the  purpose  of  devising  some  plan  of  common  defence 
against  threatened  Indian  attacks,  the  West  India  Company 
failing  to  provide  adequate  protection.  The  English  dele- 
gates had  additional  grievances  which  they  proceeded  to  air 
at  this  meeting,  under  the  form  of  a  M  remonstrance,"  both 
to  the  Director  and  Council  and  to  the  States-General  of 
the  Netherlands :  —  they  were  not  as  well  treated  as  they  ex- 
pected to  be  when  they  came  to  settle  under  the  rule  of  the 
New  Netherland  authorities ;  moreover,  discriminations  were 
made  against  them  and  in  favor  of  the  Dutch.  These  men, 
some  of  whom — as  the  Middelburg  or  Newtown  delegates  — 
had  not  yet  been  in  the  country  much  over  a  year,  calmly 
proceeded  to  inform  the  Director-General  that  "  instead  of 
liberty,  an  arbitrary  government  is  rearing  its  head  among 
them,  and  laws  affecting  the  lives  and  property  of  the  com- 
monalty are  enacted  without  the  knowledge  or  approbation 
of  the  latter."  The  unquestionable  truth  of  these  assertions 
only  made  them  the  less  palatable  to  Stuyvesant,  and  had 
his  path  been  clear,  he  would  undoubtedly  have  terminated 
the  proceedings  of  the  Convention  at  the  City  Tavern  in 
short  order.  Just  about  this  time,  however,  the  Dutch  and 
English  fleets,  under  Van  Tromp  and  Blake,  had  been  pound- 
ing each  other  to  pieces  in  the  English  Channel,  in  the  course 
of  the  war  growing  out  of  the  Navigation  Act,  —  with  con- 
siderable disadvantage  to  the  Dutch.  It  was  impossible  to 
tell  what  the  English  in  the  New  England  colonies  might 
take  it  into  their  heads  to  do ;  the  Director-General  therefore 
restrained  himself  so  far  as  to  send  a  written  communication 

1  Two  sessions  were  held,  one  beginning  on  the  25th  of  November,  and  the 
other  on  the  10th  of  December,  1653. 


184     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


to  the  convention,  in  which,  after  reminding  the  delegates  that 
they  were  an  illegal  body,  with  whose  doings  he  was  not  at 
all  obliged  to  concern  himself,  he  proceeded  to  examine  and 
to  deny  their  statements,  merely  referring  to  the  English  as 
the  "instigators  and  leaders  of  these  novelties." 

The  same  cause  which  had  induced  the  Director-General 
to  demean  himself  with  unwonted  moderation  towards  the 
delegates  led  the  latter  to  assume  a  lofty  tone.  The  English 
delegates  from  Heemstede,  Rusdorp,  Vlissingen,  and  Middel- 
burg  1  (whose  constituents,  all  told,  probably  did  not  amount 
to  a  thousand  men,  women,  and  children),  already  saw,  in 
their  mind's  eye,  the  fleets  and  armies  of  Cromwell  advancing 
on  New  Amsterdam  ;  they  immediately  again  demanded  the 
redress  of  their  grievances,  and  notified  Stuyvesant  that  in 
case  of  refusal  they  would  appeal  to  his  superiors  at  Amster- 
dam. This  was  too  much:  the  persecutor  of  Melyn  and  of 
Kuyter  never  could  bear  to  hear  talk  of  an  appeal  from  his 
decisions ;  he  flew  into  a  rage,  and  dispersed  the  convention 
so  quickly  that  the  delegates  hardly  had  time  to  pay  their 
tavern  bills.  True  to  their  word,  the  delegates  sent  their 
"  remonstrance "  to  the  Amsterdam  Chamber  of  the  West 
India  Company,  but  it  was  rejected  by  that  body  with  scant 
courtesy. 

A  municipal  government,  modelled  to  a  certain  extent 
upon  that  of  the  towns  of  the  Netherlands,  having  been 
granted  to  New  Amsterdam  by  the  West  India  Company, 
in  answer  to  long-continued  requests  from  the  citizens,  the 
new  form  of  administration,  under  a  schout,  or  sheriff,  two 
burgomasters,  or  superior  magistrates,  and  five  schepens,  or 
councillors,  took  effect  at  the  beginning  of  the  year  1653; 
and  the  City  Tavern  was  appointed  as  the  place  in  which 
the  new  municipal  body  should  hold  its  sessions,  both  ad- 
ministrative and  judicial,  for  in  addition  to  the  ordinary 
business  of  town  or  city  government,  the  burgomasters  and 
schepens  also  formed  a  court  of  limited  jurisdiction  in  both 
civil  and  criminal  matters.  It  soon  became  evident,  how- 
1  The  later  Hempstead,  Jamaica,  Flushing,  and  Newtown. 


CITY  TAVERN  BECOMES  THE  TOWN  HALL  185 


ever,  that  it  was  highly  desirable,  for  various  reasons,  that 
the  municipality  should  have  entire  control  of  the  building  in 
which  its  business  was  carried  on.  The  West  India  Com- 
pany, in  the  embarrassed  state  of  its  affairs,  had  never  cleared 
away  its  debts  for  the  construction  of  the  City  Tavern ;  and 
upon  the  24th  of  December,  1653,  the  burgomasters  and 
schepens  sent  a  petition  to  the  Company  at  Amsterdam, 
asking  for  a  grant  to  them  of  the  building,  offering  on  their 
part  to  pay  the  debts  which  remained  due  upon  the  same. 
This  petition  was  favorably  entertained  by  the  Amsterdam 
Chamber  of  the  Company,  which,  on  the  18th  of  May,  1654, 
granted  the  City  Tavern  "  to  the  use  of  the  Regents  for  the 
time  being,  and  for  their  business,  but  no  one  shall  claim  from 
this  any  right  to  it  individually,  or  to  alienate  or  mortgage  it 
collectively."  1 

The  City  Tavern,  accordingly,  became  known  henceforth 
as  the  Stadt  Huys,  or  Town  Hall,  and  several  important 
changes  soon  took  place  around  it.  The  building  appears  to 
have  stood  originally  upon  the  lower  part  of  the  slope  of  a 
knoll  of  moderate  elevation  rising  to  the  east  of  it,  in  such 
a  manner  that  while  the  eastern  portion  of  its  basement  was 
below,  the  western  portion  was  above  the  surface  of  the 
ground,  and  in  this  latter,  facing  the  fort  and  the  town,  was 
the  entrance,  or  one  of  the  entrances  to  the  tavern.  Soon 
after  the  municipality  acquired  this  building,  fears  began  to 
be  entertained  that  the  bank  or  open  space  between  it  and 
the  river  might  be  seriously  encroached  upon  by  the  waves. 
It  was  decided  therefore  to  fill  out  and  to  grade  between  the 
Town  House  and  the  water's  edge,  and  to  protect  this  im- 
provement from  the  tides  by  constructing  a  sheet-piling  of 
planks  in  front  of  it.  In  pursuance  of  this  design,  Charles 
Bridges  (or,  as  the  Dutch  called  him,  Van  Brugge),  who 
held,  in  right  of  his  wife,  Sarah,  the  ground  occupied  by  the 
knoll  above  mentioned,  lying  east  of  the  Town  Hall,  was 

1  The  fee  simple  of  this  property,  which  was  afterwards  granted  by  the  city, 
came  to  it,  of  course,  through  the  confiscation  of  the  property  of  the  West  India 
Company  by  the  English  after  the  surrender,  in  1 664. 


186     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


notified,  in  April,  1656,  by  the  court  messenger,  "  for  the 
good  of  this  town,  to  let  him  take,  without  any  hindrance, 
from  the  hill  before  his  lot,  as  much  earth  as  shall  be  re- 
quired for  filling  in  before  the  Town  Hall." 

The  ground  now  covered  by  Pearl  Street  and  a  part  of 
Coenties  Slip  having  been  thus  filled  out  and  levelled,  the 
main  entrance  to  the  hall  was  made  on  the  side  towards  the 
river,  and  a  small  cupola  for  a  bell  having  been  placed  upon 
it,  the  building  assumed  the  form  in  which  it  has  been 
presented  to  us  by  the  sketch  of  the  Labadist  missionaries, 
Danker  and  Sluyter,  upon  their  visit  to  New  York  in  1679- 
80,  —  probably  the  only  reliable  representation  in  existence 
of  this  building  as  it  was  in  its  later  days.1 

Whether  the  Town  Hall  continued  to  be  used  for  tavern 
purposes,  after  its  acquisition  by  the  burgomasters,  is  not 
clear.  On  the  one  hand,  the  business  of  the  municipality 
could  have  required  but  a  small  portion  of  the  building,  and 
it  was  certainly  used  for  festive  purposes ;  upon  the  con- 
templated absence  from  New  Amsterdam  of  Director-General 
Stuyvesant,  in  the  winter  of  1654-55,  the  burgomasters  make 
the  following  entry  in  their  minutes,  under  date  of  Saturday 
afternoon,  December  12,  1654 :  "  that,  as  the  Right  Honorable 
intends  to  depart,  the  burgomasters  and  schepens  shall  com- 
pliment him  before  he  take  his  gallant  voyage,  and  for  this 
purpose  shall  provide  a  gay  repast  on  next  Wednesday  noon 
at  the  Town  Hall,  in  the  Council  Chamber.  Wherefore  a  list 
of  what  was  required  was  made  out,  and  what  was  considered 
necessary  was  ordered." 

1  The  view  of  the  Stadt  Huys,  given  by  Mr.  D.  T.  Valentine,  in  his  History  of 
New  York,  and  also  in  the  Manuals  of  the  Common  Council  (which  view  has 
generally  been  inserted  in  the  works  of  later  writers),  besides  being  architectur- 
ally impossible,  with  its  leaning  or  "  drunken  "  stepped  gables,  is  also  inaccurate 
in  several  other  respects.  As  for  the  appearance  of  this  building  in  one  of  Mr. 
V.'s  imaginary  sketches,  purporting  to  be  a  view  of  the  vicinity  in  1658  (Man. 
Com.  Counc,  for  1862,  p.  529),  the  slight  mistakes  are  made  of  placing  the  hill 
along  the  shore  to  the  west,  instead  of  to  the  east,  of  the  Town  Hall,  and  in  crown- 
ing that  edifice  with  a  cupola,  some  ten  or  fifteen  years  before  it  was  placed 
there. 


STADT  HUYS  WANTED  FOR  A  SCHOOL  187 


On  the  other  hand,  however,  the  space  in  and  about  the 
Town  House  was  frequently  made  use  of  in  such  a  way  as 
to  seem  incompatible  with  the  employment  of  any  part  of  the 
building  for  tavern  purposes.  In  1655,  the  structure  is  stated 
to  be  encumbered  with  a  large  quantity  of  salt,  placed  there 
on  storage,  and  certain  lodgers  had  also  got  possession  of 
different  parts  of  it,  or  of  its  outbuildings,  —  one  of  these,  in 
particular,  was  a  person  who,  having  had  the  misfortune  to 
lose  his  own  house  by  fire,  had  taken  up  his  quarters  here, 
"  in  the  little  sail  loft."  At  this  time  the  burgomasters  ordered 
the  premises  to  be  cleared.  In  the  same  manner,  in  1660,  it 
was  found  that  the  yard  or  enclosure  of  the  Town  House  was 
being  used  for  the  storage  of  lumber,  brick,  etc.,  and  it  was 
ordered  that  a  gate  should  be  made  in  the  rear,  and  that  the 
jailer  should  see  that  the  trespasses  were  discontinued. 

Whether  any  portion  of  this  building  was  used  for  school 
purposes,  as  has  been  claimed,  is  doubtful.  On  the  4th  of 
April,  1652,  the  Chamber  of  Directors  of  the  West  India 
Company  at  Amsterdam  gave  the  appointment  of  school- 
master at  New  Amsterdam  to  Jan  la  Montagne,  and  he  was 
permitted  to  use  the  City  Tavern,  "  if  practicable."  Some 
time  must  have  elapsed,  however,  before  such  an  arrangement 
could  have  gone  into  effect,  and  in  the  beginning  of  the  suc- 
ceeding year  the  City  Tavern  was  appropriated  to  the  use  of 
the  burgomasters,  as  already  shown.  The  writer  has  not  been 
able  to  find  any  evidence  that  the  building  was  used  for  school 
purposes,  under  the  regime  of  the  burgomasters :  on  the  con- 
trary, in  November,  1656,  Harmanus  van  Hoboken,  then 
schoolmaster,  petitions  those  magistrates  "  to  grant  him  the 
hall  and  side  room  for  the  use  of  the  school,  and  as  a  dwell- 
ing, inasmuch  as  he,  the  petitioner,  does  not  know  how  to 
manage  for  the  proper  accommodation  of  the  children  during 
winter,  for  they  much  require  a  place  adapted  for  fire,  and  to 
be  warmed,  for  which  their  present  tenement  is  wholly  unfit." 
The  schoolmaster  then  goes  on  to  show  that  he  has  a  wife 
and  children,  and  is  in  straits  to  find  accommodation  for  them, 
and  he  asks  that  if  the  burgomasters  cannot  grant  him  the 


188     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


rooms  requested,  they  will  allow  him  the  rent  of  the  back 
room  of  a  certain  house,  then  occupied  by  one  Geurt  Coerten. 
To  this  petition,  the  burgomasters  answer  that  "  the  hall  and 
little  room  are  not  in  repair,  and  are,  moreover,  wanted  for 
other  purposes.  He  (petitioner)  is  allowed  to  rent  said 
house,  for  which  one  hundred  guilders  shall  be  paid  him 
yearly." 

Here,  then,  in  the  Stadt  Huys  of  New  Amsterdam,  the 
worthy  merchants  and  brewers,  Indian  traders  and  ship  cap- 
tains, who  usually  composed  the  body  of  burgomasters  and 
schepens  of  the  little  municipality,  met  and  passed  their  ordi- 
nances for  the  government  of  the  town,  or  sat  as  a  court  of 
justice  to  consider  the  numerous  and  sometimes  queer  con- 
troversies which  were  brought  before  them.  Naturally,  they 
were  not  men  who  were  overstocked  with  legal  lore.  Pon- 
derous folios  and  quartos,  in  hog-skin,  of  the  civil  and  im- 
perial laws,  of  the  ordinances  of  the  States-General  and  of  the 
States  of  Holland,  and  the  well-thumbed  "  Roseboom's  Re- 
cueil"  of  the  Statutes  and  Customs  of  Amsterdam,  lay  before 
the  magistrates,  inviting  them  to  lose  themselves  in  the  mazes 
of  those  abstruse  treatises ;  they  preferred,  however,  as  a  rule, 
to  render  their  decisions  by  the  aid  of  what  is  sometimes 
known  as  "  horse  sense."  They  were  fond  of  settling  cases 
informally  by  inducing  parties  to  accept  their  advice  before 
going  to  trial :  failing  this,  they  were  apt  to  send  the  cases 
for  arbitration  to  one  or  two  "  good  men,"  whom  they  would 
select  out  of  the  community,  with  instructions  to  reconcile 
the  contending  parties,  if  possible ;  in  one  case,  in  the  year 
1662,  where  a  question  of  the  sewing  of  linen  caps  was  in- 
volved, the  court  went  so  far  as  to  appoint  certain  "  good 
women  "  as  arbitrators. 

As  to  the  portion  of  the  Stadt  Huys  building  used  for  the 
sessions  of  the  court,  Mr.  D.  T.  Valentine  has  found  some 
evidence,  apparently,  that  it  was  the  eastern  side  of  the 
second  story,  —  for  he  asserts  this  to  have  been  the  fact.  In 
1670,  however,  Governor  Francis  Lovelace,  who  had  acquired  a 
plot  of  ground  immediately  adjoining  the  Stadt  Huys,  upon  the 


GOVERNOR  LOVELACE'S  TAVERN  189 


west,  commenced  the  erection  of  "  an  inn,  or  ordinary  "  upon  the 
plot,  and  sent  a  communication  to  the  magistrates  in  the  early 
part  of  that  year  to  know  whether  they  would  allow  him  "  to 
build  the  upper  part  of  the  house  something  over  the  passage 
of  the  town  which  lieth  between  the  State  House  and  the 
lott,  and  to  make  a  doore  to  go  from  the  upper  part  of  the 
house  into  the  Court's  Chambers."  This  proposition — which 
was  agreed  to  by  the  magistrates,  leaving  it  to  the  governor's 
discretion  to  pay  what  was  thought  fit  for  "  the  vacant  strooke 
of  ground  "  lying  between  the  buildings,  and  moreover  "  not 
to  cut  off  the  entrance  into  the  prison  doore,  or  common 
gaol "  —  would  seem  to  indicate  that  the  court-room  was 
upon  the  western  side  of  the  second  floor,  in  1670,  at  any  rate. 
The  term  "  chambers  "  used  in  the  communication  is  hardly 
likely  to  have  referred  to  private  rooms  of  the  magistrates,  as 
tavern  connection,  though  possibly  very  convenient  in  some 
cases,  might  have  led  to  public  scandal  against  those  high 
officials.  The  tavern  of  Governor  Lovelace,  above  referred 
to,  is  shown  upon  the  Danker  and  Sluyter  view  of  1679. 

The  Stadt  Huys  grounds  were  infringed  upon,  not  only  by 
the  grant  to  Governor  Lovelace,  but  by  several  other  grants, 
made  from  time  to  time.  During  the  years  1664  to  1666,  the 
entire  front  along  Duke  Street,  as  it  was  then  called,  or  the 
present  Stone  Street,  was  granted  in  very  small  lots  to  va- 
rious individuals,  and  only  an  alley  or  passageway  to  the  rear 
of  the  hall  was  retained :  this  passageway  opened  upon  Stone 
Street  just  about  where  the  doorway  of  the  present  building 
No.  40  Stone  Street  now  is.  Towards  the  close  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  the  hall  building  began  to  show  signs  of  dilapi- 
dation, to  such  an  extent  that,  although  it  had  only  been 
standing  a  little  more  than  fifty  years,  it  gradually  came  to 
be  considered  unsafe.  In  1696,  the  subject  of  erecting  a  new 
City  Hall  was  under  discussion ;  in  1698,  the  ground  for  the 
new  building  was  selected,  at  the  northeast  corner  of  Wall 
and  the  present  Nassau  streets,  and  finally,  in  August,  1699, 
the  historic  building  and  its  site  were  sold  at  public  auction. 

Within  the  walls  of  this  edifice,  or,  in  fine  weather,  upon 


190     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


the  open  space  between  it  and  the  river,  the  citizens  of  New 
Amsterdam  were  wont  to  gather  and  to  discuss  matters  of  pub- 
lic and  of  private  interest,  as  well  as  the  news  of  the  day, 
through  more  than  half  a  century  of  a  period  to  which  are 
usually  ascribed  some  of  the  most  interesting  occurrences  of 
modern  times.  Here,  as  tidings  from  across  the  ocean  tardily 
came  to  be  known,  men  talked  of  the  destruction  of  the  mon- 
archy in  England  and  of  the  new  commonwealth  there ;  of 
the  latter  days  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War ;  of  Louis  XIV.  and 
of  the  French  power,  threatening  all  Europe;  of  the  great 
naval  wars  between  England  and  the  Netherlands  for  the 
supremacy  of  the  seas ;  of  the  Turkish  hordes  before  Vienna, 
and  of  their  flight  before  John  Sobieski ;  of  the  wonderful 
revolutions  which  placed  William  of  Orange  upon  the  throne 
of  England  and  at  the  front  of  European  politics.  The  names 
of  Cromwell  and  of  Richelieu,  of  Mazarin  and  of  Colbert ;  of 
the  murdered  King  Charles,  and  of  the  fugitive  King  James; 
of  great  admirals  and  generals,  Van  Tromp  and  De  Ruyter, 
Turenne  and  Luxembourg,  —  were  once  familiar  sounds  in 
this  locality.1  Now,  all  is  changed:  crowded  warehouses 
cover  the  land  far  out  into  what  was  the  river  of  those 
da}rs ;  and  in  front  of  the  spot  where  were  the  windows  of 
the  court-room  in  which  Leisler  and  Milborne  were  con- 
demned to  suffer  death  for  treason,  the  trains  of  the  elevated 
railway  sweep  round  into  Coenties  Slip. 

The  site  of  the  beginnings  of  its  municipal  government 
would  have  been  carefully  preserved,  or  at  any  rate  honored 
with  a  substantial  monument,  by  almost  any  small  town  of 
New  England,  but  in  the  City  of  New  York  it  has  not  been 
thought  necessary  to  mark  the  site  of  the  Stadt  Huys  by 
anything  more  than  a  small  bronze  plate  placed  high  up  on 

1  Council  Minutes,  6  July,  1672.  "  Tuesday  next,  about  10  or  11  of  ye  clock 
before  noon  is  appointed  to  make  proclamation  of  the  Warre,"  at  the  State 
House.  This  was  the  war  by  England  and  France  against  the  United  Provinces, 
in  which  war  New  York  was  captured  by  the  Dutch  in  the  following  year,  and  in 
which  William  III.  the  young  Prince  of  Orange,  newly  appointed  Commander-in- 
chief  of  the  forces  of  the  Netherlands,  displayed  his  abilities  under  very  trying 
circumstances. 


SITE  OF  THE  STADT  HUYS 


191 


the  front  of  the  modern  building  standing  at  this  point ;  the 
inscription  upon  this  plate  may  doubtless  be  read  from  the 
street  by  any  person  provided  with  a  good  opera-glass. 
The  corporation  which  has  so  much  of  the  tax-payers'  money 
to  spend  for  all  sorts  of  necessary  and  of  unnecessary  objects 
has  perhaps  spent  a  good  deal  of  it  to  worse  advantage  than 
if  it  had  acquired  the  site  of  its  first  home,  and  thereon  built, 
for  some  of  its  municipal  purposes,  a  building  designed  to 
reproduce  as  far  as  possible  the  historic  structure. 

The  site  of  the  Stadt  Huys  is  at  present  occupied  by  a 
common  warehouse,  tall  and  dismal,  and  by  a  liquor  saloon 
which  may  represent  a  continuous  flow  of  the  tap  at  this  spot, 
from  the  days  of  the  Great  Tavern  and  of  Governor  Love- 
lace's "  ordinary." 


CHAPTER  XVI 


THE  "ENGLISH  QUARTER,"  AND  THE  GRANTS  TO  THOMAS 
WILLET  AND  TO  RICHARD  SMITH.  — WILLIAM  PATER- 
SON,  THE  SCOTCHMAN,  AND  HIS  ADVENTURES.  — WHO 
WAS  HE?  — AN  HISTORICAL  PROBLEM 

F  I  ^HE  present  block  of  ground  lying  between  Stone  and 


1  Pearl  streets,  Coenties  Alley  and  Hanover  Square, 
which  constituted,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  the  small 
tract  situated  east  of  the  Stadt  Huys  and  between  Hoogh 
Straet  and  the  river  shore,  became,  at  an  early  day,  a  sort  of 
English  quarter  in  the  town.  Here,  in  1645,  Thomas  Willet 
received  a  grant  of  the  land  lying  "next  to  the  Great 
Tavern,"  a  parcel  of  irregular  shape,  averaging  about  one 
hundred  and  seventy-five  feet  in  width,  and  extending  from 
the  road,  or  Hoogh  Straet,  to  the  river,  —  a  distance  of 
something  over  one  hundred  feet.  This  parcel  seems  to 
have  formed  a  hill,  or  bluff  of  moderate  height,  which  was 
levelled  —  in  part,  at  any  rate  —  about  the  year  1656,  for 
the  purpose  of  filling  out  and  grading  the  open  space  along 
the  shore  which  formed  what  is  now  Pearl  Street  in  this 
vicinity,  of  which  proceeding  some  notice  has  already  been 
taken.1  Who  this  Thomas  Willet,  the  original  grantee,  was, 
has  not  been  very  clearly  ascertained.  He  has  been  con- 
stantly confounded  by  various  writers  with  Captain  Thomas 
Willet  of  Plymouth  Colony,  who  afterwards  engaged  in  trade 
between  New  Amsterdam  and  the  New  England  towns,  and 
who,  after  the  surrender  to  the  English  in  1664,  was  ap- 
pointed the  first  mayor  of  the  City  of  New  York.  That  he 
was  of  kin  to  Captain  Thomas  Willet  is  not  at  all  improbable ; 
but  examination  fails  to  disclose  the  nature  of  the  connection, 


1  See  ante,  page  185. 


C ok. nt iks  Alley. 

Looking  towards  Stone  Street.    The  ancient  Stadt  Huys  Lane, 
with  part  of  the  site  of  the  Stadt  Huys. 


THOMAS  WILLET 


193 


if  any  existed.  About  all  that  seems  to  be  known  of  the 
antecedents  of  Thomas  Willet  of  New  Amsterdam  is  that  in 
his  marriage  record  in  the  Dutch  Church  he  is  described  as 
being  from  Bristol,  in  England. 

Thomas  Willet,  the  grantee  of  the  Hoogh  Straet  land, 
appears  in  1643  —  then  being  a  young  man  of  twenty-two 
years  of  age  —  as  one  of  the  English  soldiers  in  the  employ 
of  the  West  India  Company.  As  such,  he  was  one  of  those 
who  took  part  in  the  massacre  of  the  Indians,  by  Director 
Kieft's  orders,  on  the  night  of  February  25,  1643,  at  Pa- 
vonia;  and  upon  the  next  day  he  was  one  of  the  witnesses  of 
the  killing  of  the  Dutchman,  Dirck  Straetmaker,  and  his  wife, 
who  in  spite  of  warnings  to  the  contrary  had  insisted  on  visit- 
ing the  scene  of  the  horrid  butchery  of  the  preceding  night, 
where  the  bodies  of  the  slain  were  still  lying;  he  and  his 
wife  were  there  murdered  by  some  of  the  enraged  Indians 
who  had  already  begun  to  gather  in  the  vicinity,  —  the 
Dutch  soldiers  being  too  far  away  to  afford  relief. 

It  was  in  the  fall  of  this  same  year,  1643,  that  Thomas 
Willet  married  an  English  girl,  Sarah,  the  daughter  of 
Thomas  Cornell.  The  latter,  with  his  family,  had  emigrated 
to  America  several  years  before,  from  the  shire  of  Essex  in 
England,  and  had  acquired  from  the  Indians  a  tract  lying 
just  east  of  the  Bronx  River;  here  he  established  a  planta- 
tion, which  with  those  of  his  neighbors,  Jonas  Bronck  and 
Edward  Jessup,  formed  the  outposts  of  civilization  in  the 
vicinity  of  New  Amsterdam  along  the  East  River;  Thomas 
Cornell's  tract  soon  took  the  name  of  Cornell's  Neck,  and 
his  farmhouse  was  situated  nearly  two  miles  southeast  of  the 
present  village  of  West  Farms. 

After  his  marriage  to  Sarah  Cornell,  Thomas  Willet  ap- 
pears to  have  remained  at  New  Amsterdam  for  several  years, 
still  apparently  in  the  employ  of  the  West  India  Company. 
His  presence,  with  his  captain,  Unclerhill,  at  the  time  of  the 
drunken  onslaught  of  the  latter  on  Dominie  Bogardus's  party 
at  the  City  Tavern,  in  1644,  has  already  been  spoken  of.1 

1  See  ante,  page  180. 
13 


194     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Although  his  ground-brief  for  the  land  on  Hoogh  Straet  was 
only  obtained  in  1645,  there  is  evidence  that  he  had  built 
upon  the  plot  before  that  time,  his  house  occupying  very 
nearly  the  site  of  the  present  building,  No.  48  Stone  Street, 
—  now  an  old  tea  and  coffee  warehouse.  In  the  summer  or 
autumn  of  1645,  he  appears  to  have  been  engaged  in  a  joint 
mercantile  speculation  with  the  skipper  Juriaen  Blanck  and 
Doctor  Kiersted's  brother  Jochem,  in  relation  to  which  the 
partners  had  a  disagreement  which  brought  them  into  court. 
After  this  we  have  no  further  notices  of  Thomas  Willet;  he 
must,  however,  have  died  within  a  year  or  so  from  the  last- 
mentioned  date,  for  in  November,  1647,  his  widow  Sarah 
married  Charles  Bridges,  of  Canterbury. 

At  the  mention  of  Canterbury,  thoughts  of  the  old  city 
of  the  monk  St.  Augustine  and  of  Thomas  a  Becket  will 
occur  to  many,  —  where  the  majestic  cathedral,  the  mother- 
church  of  England,  still  looks  down  (or  recently  did,  for 
some  serious  inroads  have  been  made  by  modern  innovations) 
on  massive  city  walls  and  gates,  upon  quaint  streets  lined  with 
overhanging  houses,  and  upon  the  Stour,  placidly  flowing  by 
the  city  and  through  hop  fields  and  meadows,  orchards  and 
gardens,  — much  as  it  all  was  in  Charles  Bridges'  time;  for 
Canterbury  is  one  of  those  eddies,  lying  outside  the  main  cur- 
rent of  time,  where  all  things  slowly  revolve  in  a  limited  circle, 
while  the  greater  flow  sweeps  by  with  its  perpetual  change. 

Causes  of  which  we  are  ignorant  transferred  Charles 
Bridges  from  the  ancient  capital  of  the  Kent-men  to  the 
Dutch  island  of  Curacoa,  in  the  West  Indies,  prior  to  1639, 
in  which  year  we  find  him  making  a  voyage  to  New  Amster- 
dam as  supercargo  of  the  ship  "White  Raven."  Bridges 
early  became  a  thoroughly  Teutonized  Englishman,  and  was 
not  only  called  by  the  Dutch,  but  called  himself,  by  the 
Dutch  equivalent  of  his  name,  Carel  van  Brugge.  He  rose 
into  prominence  in  the  Dutch  island,  and  in  1644  was  ap- 
pointed member  of  the  Council  and  keeper  of  the  stores  at 
that  place.  He  seems  to  have  been  somewhat  of  a  favorite 
with  Director  Stuyvesant,  and  when  the  latter  was  trans- 


CHARLES  BRIDGES 


195 


f erred  from  Curacoa  to  New  Amsterdam,  in  the  early  part 
of  1647,  Bridges,  or  Van  Brugge,  accompanied  him  from  the 
West  Indies,  and  upon  reaching  New  Netherland,  he  received 
the  appointment  of  commissary  at  Fort  Orange,  or  Albany, 
where  he  appears  to  have  taken  the  place  of  the  unfortunate 
surgeon,  Harmanus  van  der  Bogaerdt.1  As  he  was  married 
just  about  this  period  to  the  widow  Willet,  it  may  be  presumed 
that  he  resided  at  Fort  Orange  for  some  time,  as  Ave  hear 
nothing  further  of  him  till  1651,  when  he  was  again  in  New 
Amsterdam,  holding  the  office  of  commissary  of  provincial 
accounts,  and  in  1652  he  was  made  Provincial  Secretary. 
For  many  years,  Bridges  and  his  family,  including  his  young 
step-sons,  William  and  Thomas  Willet,  resided  part  of  the 
time  in  the  house  on  Hoogh  Straet,  which  had  belonged  to 
Mrs.  Bridges'  first  husband,  or  in  Vlissingen,  now  Flushing 
upon  Long  Island,  where  Bridges  early  acquired  interests. 
After  the  surrender  of  New  Netherland  to  the  English, 
in  1661,  Charles  Bridges,  or  Van  Brugge,  says  Doctor 
O'Callaghan,  "resumed  his  English  name,  appearing  under 
it  as  one  of  the  patentees  of  Flushing.  With  the  return  of 
the  Dutch  in  1673,  he  became  again  Carel  van  Brugge  and 
was  appointed  clerk  of  the  English  towns  upon  Long  Island, 
residing  at  Flushing,  where  he  died,  August,  1682."  His 
wife  Sarah,  who  survived  him,  married  for  her  third  husband 
John  Lawrence,  Jr.,  of  Flushing;  and  some  time  prior  to 
1686,  the  property  on  Hoogh  Straet  was  divided  between 
Lawrence  and  Thomas  Willet,  son  of  the  original  grantee, 
Lawrence  retaining  the  house  and  the  eastern  half  of  the  plot 
of  ground. 

At  the  time  of  this  partition,  however,  Thomas  Willet's 
patrimony  had  been  reduced  in  size  by  the  sale  of  two  small 
parcels  from  it  many  years  before,  by  Charles  Bridges  and 
his  wife,  as  it  would  seem.  Of  these  parcels,  one  was  a  lot 
adjoining  the  Stadt  Huys  Lane,  which  came  into  the  pos- 
session of  George  Woolsey,  probably  soon  after  the  period  of 
our  survey.    Woolsey  was,  it  is  believed,  a  native  of  the 

1  See  ante,  page  70. 


196     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


ancient  fishing  town  of  Yarmouth,  in  the  County  of  Norfolk, 
on  the  east  coast  of  England,  and  as  early  as  1646  was  the 
clerk  or  manager  of  Isaac  Allerton,  the  active  trader  through 
whose  hands  passed  most  of  the  trade  between  New  Amster- 
dam and  the  New  England  settlements,  and  whose  warehouse 
stood  upon  the  shore  of  the  East  River  near  the  southwest 
corner  of  the  present  Pearl  Street  and  Peck  Slip.  In 
December,  1647,  about  a  month  after  the  marriage  of  Charles 
Bridges,  we  find  the  marriage  of  George  Woolsey  to  Rebecca 
Cornell,  who  was  in  all  probability  a  sister  of  Mrs.  Bridges. 
Just  when  Woolsey  acquired  this  lot  at  the  Stadt  Huys  Lane 
we  are  ignorant,  as  we  are  also  of  the  time  at  which  he  built 
upon  it;  it  was  undoubtedly  not  until  after  the  grading  of 
the  hill  at  this  point,  in  1656,  in  order  to  fill  out  in  front  of 
the  Town  Hall,  as  already  mentioned;  perhaps  it  was  not 
until  after  1659,  when  his  employer,  Isaac  Allerton,  died,  and 
the  business  passed  into  other  hands.  Be  this  as  it  may,  we 
find  George  Woolsey  residing  here  for  several  years,  until  in 
1668  he  sold  the  premises  to  William  Paterson.  The  dingy 
brick  building  which  now  occupies  this  site  —  a  bagging  and 
cooperage  warehouse,  No.  75  Pearl  Street,  the  entrance  to 
which  stands  in  the  perpetual  twilight  of  the  elevated  rail- 
way structure  above  —  is  dull  and  commonplace  enough  to 
afford  some  ground  for  an  impression  that  no  associations  of 
interest  could  possibly  have  marked  the  spot;  yet  here  was 
apparently  the  residence  for  a  time  of  a  singular  character, 
whose  history,  if  fully  known,  might  throw  a  great  deal  of 
light  upon  one  of  the  historical  mysteries  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  which  has  hitherto  baffled  many  determined  investi- 
gators. The  matter  seems  to  be  of  sufficient  interest  and 
importance  to  justify  a  digression  from  the  plan  of  our 
survey. 

William  Paterson,  to  whom  George  Woolsey  sold  his 
house  near  the  Town  Hall,  was  a  Scotchman  who  appeared 
in  New  York  in  or  about  the  year  1668.  He  called  himself 
a  merchant,  or  trader,  but  his  trading  consisted  principally, 
so  far  as  we  are  informed,  in  the  importation  of  liquor-— 


WILLIAM  PATERSON'S  HOUSES 


197 


mainly  rum,  of  course  —  from  the  West  Indies.  One  cir- 
cumstance attending  Paterson's  coming  to  New  York  cannot 
fail  to  arrest  our  attention;  while  most  of  the  new  traders, 
both  Dutch  and  English,  who  had  come  to  the  small  town, 
had  engaged  in  business  here  cautiously,  usually  hiring  a 
house  until  they  were  well  established,  and  at  most  only  pur- 
chasing a  location  for  their  store  or  warehouse,  Paterson, 
within  a  very  short  time  after  his  arrival,  acquired  possession 
of  no  less  than  six  different  pieces  of  property,  four  of  which 
already  contained  houses  upon  them,  while  upon  another  of 
his  lots  he  himself  seems  to  have  had  a  building  erected  soon 
after  his  purchase.1 

Of  Paterson's  life  at  New  York  we  know  but  little;  he 
appears  to  have  possessed  a  keen  sense  of  injustice,  coupled 
with  a  quick  temper,  and  this  soon  brought  him  into  trouble 
there.  In  the  early  part  of  the  spring  of  1669,  Paterson  had 
brought  a  suit  upon  an  account  and  other  matters  against 
one  John  Garland,  and  had  recovered  judgment.  He  was 
now  endeavoring  to  obtain  either  the  collection  of  his  debt  or 
security  for  the  same  from  Garland;  when  another  suit  was 
brought  against  the  latter  by  Isaac  Bedlo,  before  the  mayor 
and  aldermen  in  the  municipal  court.  Bedlo,  being  himself 
an  alderman  at  the  time,  was  of  course  a  member  of  the 
court.  This  cause  came  on  at  the  City  Hall  upon  the  16th 
of  March,  1669;  no  opposition  was  made  by  Garland,  and 

1  These  parcels  acquired  by  Paterson  were  as  follows  :  — 

I.  The  house  and  lot  above  mentioned  as  having  been  purchased  of  George 
Woolsey,  at  the  corner  of  the  present  Coenties  Alley  and  Pearl  Street. 

II.  A  small  house  and  lot  on  the  east  side  of  the  present  William  Street,  near 
Wall. 

III.  A  house  with  nearly  half  an  acre  of  ground  lying  upon  an  interior  lane  or 
passageway  at  one  time  called  Smith's  Street,  but  afterwards  closed,  a  frontage 
having  been  obtained  upon  the  later  Smith's  now  William  Street. 

IV.  A  house  and  lot  on  the  south  side  of  Pearl  Street  between  the  fort  and 
the  river. 

V.  A  small  parcel  of  ground  forming  the  portion  lying  towards  Stone  Street 
of  the  building  known  at  present  as  the  Old  Cotton  Exchange,  fronting  Han- 
over Square. 

VI.  A  small  lot  of  vacant  ground  at  the  southeast  corner  of  the  present  Wall 
and  William  streets. 


198     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


judgment  was  ordered  against  him  upon  the  spot,  for  3,727 
florins'  wampum,  and  an  execution  was  ordered  to  be  issued 
immediately.  Paterson,  who  was  present  in  the  court,  de- 
nounced this  proceeding  indignantly;  it  was  only  he  said, 
"in  color  to  deceive  him  and  to  prevent  him  from  collecting 
his  debt  from  Garland;"  furthermore,  the  court  was  in  no 
condition  to  pass  any  judgment,  because,  excluding  Alderman 
Bedlo,  the  prescribed  number  of  members  was  not  complete. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  court  was  composed  entirely  of  old 
Dutch  residents,  and  consisted,  besides  Cornells  van  Steen- 
wyck,  the  mayor,  of  Alderman  Bedlo,  Francois  Boon,  and 
Christopher  Hooghlandt.  In  a  matter  taking  the  form  of  an 
issue  between  one  of  their  own  members  and  a  stranger  Scotch- 
man, the  action  of  the  court  was  not  likely  to  be  materially 
different  from  that  of  more  highly  organized  tribunals  in 
similar  cases,  and  we  find  that  Paterson's  protest  not  only 
received  but  scant  consideration,  but  that,  to  complete  the 
rather  suspicious  appearance  of  the  case,  Garland's  attorney, 
who  was  present,  rose  and  stated  to  the  court  that  his  client 
"found  himself  very  much  aggrieved  by  said  judgments,  and 
asked  for  an  arrest "  (that  is,  stay  of  proceedings)  "  till  the 
return  of  his  Honor  the  Governor,  that  he  might  petition  for 
an  appeal  in  said  causes ; "  this  the  complaisant  court  allowed 
him  at  once. 

Paterson  does  not  appear  to  have  become  speedily  recon- 
ciled to  the  proceedings  of  the  Solons  of  the  Mayor's  Court 
in  his  case.  He  transferred  a  portion  of  his  wrath  to  the 
Marshal  of  the  Court,  who  held  the  executions  against  Gar- 
land ;  and  in  a  few  days  we  find  that  officer,  Henry  Newton, 
bringing  "an  action  of  Disfamation "  against  Paterson.  In 
this  he  declares  1  that  the  Scotchman  "  hath  greatly  disfamed 
this  plaintiff  in  doing  his  office  as  Marishal  of  this  citty,  in 
calling  this  plaintiff  Roag,  &  would  proeve  him  to  be  one 
before  the  Govern1"."  The  indignant  court  upon  this  occa- 
sion imposed  upon  Paterson  for  the  insult  to  their  officer  a 
fine  of  25  guilders,  "and  recommend  him  to  take  warning 

1  On  the  6th  of  April,  1669. 


AFFAIR  OF  CAPTAIN  BAKER  199 


not  to  affront  or  abuse  any  of  the  officers  for  the  future  any 
more,  or  that  a  greater  penalty  shal  be  imposed  upon  him 
according  to  the  merits  thereof." 

Greatly  irritated,  no  doubt,  by  these  proceedings,  Paterson 
seems  soon  to  have  departed  from  New  York  upon  what 
appears  to  have  been  a  trading  or  mercantile  expedition  to 
Albany;  there  he  speedily  fell  into  a  worse  difficulty  than 
his  previous  one,  and  became  the  central  figure  in  an  affair 
which  was  the  great  topic  of  the  day  throughout  the  Colony, 
and  which  threatened  for  a  time  to  bring  about  very  serious 
difficulties  between  the  Dutch  colonists  and  their  English 
rulers. 

The  captain  of  the  English  garrison  at  Albany  at  this  time 
was  one  John  Baker.  If,  as  has  been  asserted,  all  the 
varieties  of  human  character  have  been  portrayed  in  the 
writings  of  Shakespeare,  it  is  quite  manifest  that  this  man's 
type  is  to  be  found  in  Ancient  Pistol.  He  was  a  swash- 
buckler of  the  first  magnitude.  Just  what  excited  Captain 
Baker's  ire  against  William  Paterson  at  Albany  we  do  not 
know,  but  to  all  appearance  it  was  jealousy.  Paterson,  as  it 
would  seem,  had,  upon  coming  to  Albany,  hired  a  small 
house  of  Jochem  Wessells,  a  baker  by  occupation,  but  who 
was  at  this  time  engaged  in  trading  with  the  Indians.  There 
is  some  evidence  that  this  Jochem  was  the  son  of  Paterson's 
near  neighbor  in  New  York,  the  old  fisherman  Wessell 
Evertsen;  the  sites  of  his  house,  and  of  that  occupied  by 
Paterson,  were  near  the  north  gate  of  Albany,  along  the 
river  shore,  in  a  place  upon  which  are  situated  at  the  present 
day  some  very  dismal  old  houses,  just  north  of  the  depot-yard 
of  the  New  York  Central  Railway.  The  house  hired  of 
Jochem  Wessells  was  tenanted  by  Paterson  and  his  servant- 
man,  who  seem  to  have  taken  their  meals  at  the  house  of 
Paterson's  landlord.  It  was  at  the  bench  in  front  of  the 
latter  house,  where  Paterson  sat  on  the  evening  of  July  31, 
1669,  smoking  a  pipe  after  supper  and  conversing  with 
Gertruyd,  Jochem  Wessells'  wife,  when  Captain  Baker, 
coming  from  a  neighboring  tavern,  walked  up  to  Paterson 


200     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


and  accosted  him  with  a  very  foul  imputation  and  insult. 
Paterson  replied  in  a  suitable  manner  and  with  cool  temper, 
but  Captain  Baker,  whose  evident  intention  was,  as  Paterson 
states,  "to  pike  a  quarrel,"  after  threatening  to  cut  off 
Paterson's  ears,  etc.,  struck  him  in  the  face.  Paterson 
hereupon  stepped  back  into  the  doorway  and  warned  his 
adversary  against  repeating  the  act,  while  Jochem's  wife 
endeavored  to  separate  the  two  men,  but  Baker  again  struck 
Paterson,  and  this  time  succeeded  in  bringing  the  Scotch 
blood  into  full  play.  Paterson  sprang  at  his  enemy,  grasped 
him  around  the  body,  hurled  him  to  the  ground,  and  thrashed 
him  at  his  pleasure,  till  the  bystanders  interfered  in  compas- 
sion on  the  unlucky  captain.  Baker,  beside  himself  with 
rage,  now  repaired  to  the  fort,  where  he  ordered  out  a  small 
detachment  of  his  men,  with  whom  he  returned  to  the  scene 
of  battle.  Finding  the  door  of  Jochem  Wessells'  house 
fastened,  Baker  ordered  his  men  to  burst  it  open,  but  the 
whole  business  was  so  manifestly  lawless  that  the  soldiers 
refused  to  obey  his  orders,  whereupon  the  captain  burst  open 
the  door  himself  with  the  butt  of  a  musket.  Not  finding 
Paterson  here,  he  having  retired  to  his  own  house,  the  cap- 
tain contented  himself  with  striking  and  abusing  Jochem 
Wessells'  wife,  whom  he  ordered  to  be  put  under  arrest; 
after  which,  in  Paterson's  words,  "he  came  running  with  his 
said  guard  to  the  house  and  lodging  of  this  complainant,  and 
without  knoking  or  warning  of  this  complainant  that  he 
would  be  in  the  house,  he  charged  his  said  guard  to  break 
open  the  door  of  the  complainants  house  .  .  .  which  they 
likewise  refused  to  do;  and  this  complainant,  hearing  the 
noise,  being  just  ready  to  go  abed,  called  out  to  them  and 
said,  4  Stay,  Captain  Baker,  I  will  open  the  door. '  But  the 
said  Baker  replied,  1  No,  but  I  will  break  it  open, '  which  he 
likewise  did,  .  .  .  which  being  done,  he  came  in  with  his 
sword  drawn  and  pointed  at  this  complainant  with  intent  to 
have  killed  him,  which  he  likewise  would  have  done,  in  case 
it  was  not  hindered  by  the  Providence  of  God."  1 

1  The  form  of  this  providential  hindrance  is  shown  by  the  testimony  of  a 
witness,  one  Lambert  Aelberts  van  Neck,  a  Dutch  merchant  from  New  York, 


ARREST  OF  PATERSON 


201 


Paterson  was  now  taken  as  a  prisoner  to  the  fort  by 
Captain  Baker,  but  that  son  of  Mars  in  his  blind  fury  had 
unwittingly  stirred  up  an  enemy  against  himself  likely  to 
give  him  much  more  trouble  than  did  the  bruises  inflicted 
upon  him  by  William  Paterson;  this  was  the  Dutch  com- 
munity of  Albany;  the  rights  of  criminal  and  of  civil  juris- 
diction secured  to  their  courts  by  the  articles  of  surrender  to 
the  English  had  been  so  grossly  violated  by  this  exploit  of 
Baker,  that  though  the  Dutch  probably  had  but  little  personal 
interest  in  the  stranger,  William  Paterson,  yet  as  a  matter  of 
principle  they  took  up  his  cause  at  once,  and  as  one  man. 
Late  as  it  was  on  the  night  of  the  31st  of  July,  the  magis- 
trates were  convened,  and  proceeded  in  a  body  to  the  fort, 
where  they  demanded  Paterson's  release.  This  was  refused 
by  Baker  at  first,  but  within  twenty-four  hours  he  began  to 
see  the  danger  of  his  position,  and  assented  to  Paterson's 
discharge. 

In  the  mean  time  the  Dutch  magistrates  permitted  no 
delay.  Though  the  next  day  was  Sunday,  the  1st  of  August, 
they  held  an  extraordinary  session  in  the  afternoon,  at  which 
Paterson  was  present,  and  at  which  papers  were  prepared 
for  transmission  to  the  Governor  and  Council  at  New  York. 
These  were  probably  presented  in  person  by  Paterson,  and 
they  were  quickly  acted  upon  by  the  Governor,  as  the  act 
with  which  Baker  was  charged  was  of  a  nature  to  stir  up 
strife  and  sedition.  Baker  was  consequently  ordered  to 
answer  the  charges  at  once,  and  he  did  so  in  a  curious  docu- 
ment, in  which  with  the  usual  impudence  of  his  kind  he 
states  that  merely  on  account  of  his  having  spoken  "in  a 
familiar  jesting  manner  "  to  Paterson  he  was  made  the  victim 
of  a  most  atrocious  assault  by  that  individual,  "  for  in  a  very 
outrageous  manner,  he  flew  upon  this  defendant  with  so  fierce 

who  was  among  the  crowd  attracted  to  the  spot  by  the  uproar.  He  says  that 
Paterson  offered  to  open  the  door,  "  but  before  he  came  the  door  lay  prostrate 
at  his  feet.  Then  Captain  Baker  said,  '  Here,  you  Scotch  dog,  you  must  come 
along  ; '  and  violently  entering  with  his  sword  drawn,  Mr.  Paterson  caught  him 
around  the  body,  and  Captain  Baker  tried  to  run  Mr.  Paterson  through  with  his 
sword  from  above." 


202     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 

an  assault  that  he  beat  him  to  the  ground,  defendant  not  in 
the  least  suspecting  that  he  durst  have  been  so  presumptious 
as  to  have  attempted  such  an  action  in  the  street,  without 
respect  to  this  defendants  (office  ?)  under  yor  Honr."  The 
captain  furthermore  avers  that  he  did  not  so  much  care  for 
the  beating  he  received  personally,  "  but  that  he  considered 
it  done  in  contempt  of  Government,"  and  that  he  therefore 
considered  it  his  duty  to  place  Paterson  under  arrest;  "but 
he  falsely  allegeth  that  I  kept  him  prisoner  for  twenty-one 
hours,  for  after  one  hour  was  expired,  he  stay'd  the  rest  of 
the  time  for  his  recreation."  He  considers  Paterson  as  a 
contentious  fellow,  who  "hath  stuffed  this,  his  information, 
with  lyes  &  idle  allegacions;  and  further  that  he  is  not 
the  first  by  many  that  he  hath  affronted  and  abused  at 
Albany."  He  hopes  that  Paterson  will  now  be  made  a 
severe  example  of. 

The  reading  of  this  precious  production  appears  to  have 
completed  the  disgust  of  the  Governor  and  Council.  An 
order  was  made  upon  the  18th  of  August  suspending  Captain 
Baker  from  his  command,  and  allowing  Paterson  to  prose- 
cute him  in  the  civil  courts,  and  ordering  the  soldiers  of  his 
guard  to  give  in  their  depositions.  As  they  all  gave  in  their 
depositions  with  great  promptness  against  their  commander, 
one  may  infer  that  he  was  not  a  very  popular  officer. 

On  the  26th  of  August,  an  attachment  or  arrest,  in  the 
sum  of  £200,  was  issued  against  Captain  Baker's  house  and 
effects  at  Albany,  and  —  strangely  enough  —  upon  the  night 
of  the  28th  of  August  an  attempt  was  made  to  burn  the 
house  of  William  Paterson,  in  New  York.  As  to  this  latter 
affair  and  its  cause,  we  have  nothing  but  surmises ;  all  that 
we  are  informed  is  that  upon  the  2d  of  September,  the 
culprit,  Daniel  Dillon,  aged  sixteen  years,  for  attempting  to 
set  fire  to  William  Paterson's  house  "by  putting  a  brand  of 
fire  under  the  door  of  said  house,"  was  sentenced  "to  be 
whipt  twelve  slashes,"  to  be  kept  in  prison  at  the  pleasure 
of  the  court,  and  to  be  banished  from  the  city  "during 
his  life." 


PATERSON  LEAVES  NEW  YORK  203 


A  special  court,  composed  of  several  prominent  citizens, 
and  headed  by  Cornells  van  Steenwyck,  the  Mayor  of  New 
York,  had  been  appointed  to  try  Paterson's  cause  against 
Captain  Baker.  There  was  evidently  a  desire  in  several 
quarters  that  the  matter  should  not  be  carried  to  too  rigorous 
conclusions,  the  offence,  in  its  criminal  aspect,  including 
technically  the  capital  crime  of  burglary.  Captain  Baker  had 
humbled  himself  so  far  as  to  write  the  following  document : 

"  Mr  Paterson :  I  am  contented  to  submit  to  the  order  of  ye 
Committee  appointed  by  his  honor  the  Governor  Col.  Lovelace,  to 
determine  the  difference  betweene  you  and  myselfe,  and  do  con- 
fesse  what  I  did  at  Albany  to  you  was  Rashly  and  unadvisedly 
done,  and  I  am  willing  to  be  friends  with  you  &  desire  yr  excuse 
for  my  Passion,  and  so  do  drinck  to  you." 

Paterson  himself  seems  likewise  to  have  been  anxious  to 
have  this  troublesome  case  disposed  of  as  soon  as  possible. 
His  sojourn  at  New  York  and  at  Albany  had  been  attended 
with  several  annoying  experiences,  and  at  this  time  he 
appears  to  have  been  endeavoring  to  close  up  his  not  very 
profitable  "  trading  "  ventures  at  New  York,  preparatory  to 
returning  to  Scotland.  Upon  the  6th  of  October,  1669,  we 
find  that  the  special  court  or  commission  appointed  to  try 
Baker's  case,  having  made  a  recommendation  that  the  parties 
should  come  to  some  agreement,  reports  that  "  Mr.  Paterson 
flong  up  his  papers  and  left  the  case  to  be  decided  by  the 
committee."  They  thereupon,  having  found  that  Captain 
Baker  was  in  fault,  order  him  to  pay  to  Paterson  the  sum  of 
200  guilders  sewant,  or  about  $80  of  the  present  currency,  — 
so  the  case  appears  to  have  ended.1 

Paterson,  at  about  this  time,  or  in  the  fall  of  1669,  quitted 
New  York  without  having  disposed  of  any  of  his  lands  and 
houses  in  that  town.    How  these  were  managed,2  or  in  what 

1  By  an  order  of  the  Council  dated  May  14, 1670,  Captain  Baker  was  dismissed 
from  the  service. 

2  Probably  by  agents,  for  a  number  of  years  afterwards  we  are  informed 
that  "  Mr.  Bayard  "  —  probably  Nicholas  Bayard  —  had  a  letter  of  attorney  from 
Paterson,  "  in  1669,  when  he  went  away."  In  the  following  year  he  gave  another 
letter  of  attorney  to  one  William  Taylor. 


204     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


condition  they  were  left  we  do  not  know,  for  no  further 
entries  appear  in  the  records  respecting  him  or  his  property 
until  the  capture  of  New  York  by  the  Dutch  took  place,  in 
the  year  1673.  At  that  time  all  of  Paterson's  property  in  the 
city  was  confiscated  and  granted  to  various  persons  by  the 
Dutch  Governor  Colve,  on  the  ground  that  Paterson,  being 
a  resident  of  Scotland,  was  not  protected  by  the  articles  of 
surrender.  After  the  restoration  of  New  York  to  the  Eng- 
lish, and  about  1675,  it  would  appear  that  Paterson,  through 
an  attorney,  attempted  to  recover  some  compensation  for  the 
loss  of  his  property,  but  the  records  are  extremely  meagre, 
amounting  to  little  more  than  a  calendar,  in  which  Paterson's 
claim  appears  two  or  three  times.  The  occupants  of  the 
premises  were  sustained  by  the  court  in  their  possession 
under  Governor  Colve's  grants;  but  a  memorandum  was 
made  that  "in  consideration  of  Mr.  Paterson's  loosing  his 
houses"  he  should  have  "for  each  house  a  lot  of  vacant 
ground  in  some  convenient  place  within  this  city,  to  bee  laid 
out  by  the  magistrates  with  the  first  convenience."  No 
action,  however,  appears  to  have  taken  place  by  the  magis- 
trates to  carry  out  this  recommendation. 

Paterson  appears,  however,  to  have  had  sufficient  influence 
in  England  to  induce  the  Duke  of  York  to  interest  himself 
in  the  affair,  for  upon  the  17th  of  May,  1676,  we  find  the 
Governor  and  Council  making  a  minute  in  their  records, 
wherein  after  reciting  that  Mr.  Paterson's  case  "having 
been  taken  into  consideration  in  obedience  to  His  Royal 
Highness'  commands,"  they  proceed  to  state  that  "such  of 
his  houses  as  were  disposed  of  in  the  time  of  the  warre  being 
confirmed  to  ye  Possessors  by  the  Court  of  Assize,  it  is  not 
knowne  how  hee  can  be  relieved  therein." 

Ten  years  were  now  suffered  to  elapse  by  Paterson,  when, 
in  June,  1681,  he  being  then  described  as  a  merchant  of 
Edinburgh,  we  find  him  executing  a  power  of  attorney  to 
George  Lockhart,  chirurgeon,  a  Scotchman  residing  at  the 
time  in  New  York,1  authorizing  him  "to  sue  for  and  recover 

1  Lockhart  was  quite  prominently  interested  in  the  proprietary  grant  of 
East  Jersey,  of  which  he  claimed  himself  to  be  a  large  owner.    In  1683,  he 


A  HISTORICAL  QUESTION  205 


all  and  sundry  houses,  plantations,  etc.,  belonging  to  me  in 
New  York,  Albany  and  the  colonies  of  New  England,  or  in 
any  other  parts  of  America  whatsoever,  and  to  sell  and 
dispose  of  the  same,"  etc.  Under  this  power  of  attorney 
(which  was  executed  at  Edinburgh  before  Watts  Marshall 
and  J.  Barbour,  witnesses)  several  releases  were  executed 
in  the  year  1685  by  Lockhart,  to  the  former  grantees  of 
Paterson's  property. 

These  proceedings  terminate  Paterson's  connection  with 
New  York,  so  far  as  appears  from  the  records,  and  we  are 
now  brought  to  the  question  of  historical  significance  sug- 
gested in  the  early  portion  of  the  sketch  of  that  individual's 
transactions  at  New  York.  The  question  is  this:  Was 
William  Paterson,  trader  at  New  York  in  the  years  1668  and 
1669,  the  same  William  Paterson  who  nearly  a  quarter  of  a 
century  later,  in  England,  originated  the  plan  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  Bank  of  England,  and  thus  laid  the  founda- 
tion for  the  whole  system  of  modern  finance  ? 

About  the  early  life  of  the  man  who  may  be  regarded  as 
the  real  founder  of  the  Bank  of  England,  there  has  hitherto 
been  an  almost  impenetrable  veil  of  obscurity,  and  it  seems  to 
have  been  Paterson's  desire  to  increase,  as  far  as  possible, 
the  air  of  mystery  which  encompassed  him.  A  voluminous 
writer  of  pamphlets  in  favor  of  the  varied  projects  of  his 
fertile  brain,  he  chose  to  issue  them  anonymously.  Vigor- 
ously attacked  and  denounced  by  his  numerous  enemies  on 
account  of  his  financial  theories,  and  later  by  reason  of  his 
unfortunate  Darien  scheme,  which  had  like  to  have  set  the 
whole  island  of  Britain  by  the  ears,  he  rarely  condescended 
to  notice  their  vilification  of  himself  and  their  insinuations 
as  to  his  past  life.  Probably  the  necessity  of  reply  was  not 
very  great,  for  neither  Paterson's  enemies  nor  his  friends 
seem  to  have  been  able,  in  spite  of  what  must  have  been  the 

made  a  proposition  to  the  Board  of  Proprietors  of  that  province,  that  upon  re- 
ceiving the  appointment  of  marshal,  with  a  grant  of  ten  acres  in  the  village  of 
Perth,  he  would  at  his  own  expense  huild  a  prison  and  town-house  there.  (See 
Doc.  relating  to  Colonial  History  of  N.  J.,  i.  430.) 


206     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


most  strenuous  exertions  on  their  part,  to  find  much  that  was 
definitely  known  either  against  him  or  in  his  favor.  "  Of  his 
early  life,"  says  Macaulay,  "little  is  known  except  that  he 
was  a  native  of  Scotland,  and  that  he  had  been  in  the  West 
Indies.  In  what  character  he  had  visited  the  West  Indies 
was  a  matter  about  which  his  contemporaries  differed.  His 
friends  said  that  he  had  been  a  missionary;  his  enemies  that 
he  had  been  a  buccaneer.  He  seems  to  have  been  gifted  by 
nature  with  fertile  invention,  an  ardent  temperament,  and 
great  powers  of  persuasion,  and  to  have  acquired  somewhere 
in  the  course  of  his  vagrant  life  a  perfect  knowledge  of 
accounts." 

Premising  that  the  name  of  William  Paterson  is  a  very 
common  one  in  Scotland,  the  fact  remains  that  there  are 
several  singular  coincidences  which  seem  to  go  far  in  sup- 
port of  a  theory  that  the  persons  referred  to  above  under  the 
same  name  are  one  and  the  same  individual.  The  principal 
accounts  of  what  is  known  of  the  life  of  William  Paterson 
have  been  written  by  Mr.  Saxe  Bannister1  and  by  Mr.  Wil- 
liam Pagan,2  but  neither  of  these  writers  has  contributed 
much  to  our  knowledge  of  Paterson 's  earlier  years. 

In  discussing  this  matter,  it  is  necessary  first  of  all  to 
notice  an  alleged  discovery  made  by  Mr.  Bannister,  which,  if 
the  facts  stated  therein  be  reliable,  effectually  disposes  of  any 
notion  that  William  Paterson,  the  financier  and  projector  of 
the  Scotch  colony  of  Darien,  could  have  been  the  person  of 
that  name  in  New  York  in  1668-69.  This  is  a  statement 
respecting  his  own  age,  claimed  by  Bannister  to  exist  in  the 
will  of  William  Paterson,  —  a  statement  not  only  of  an 
extraordinary  nature  in  itself,  but  one  which,  though  of  the 
utmost  importance  to  their  respective  writings,  is  treated 
with  such  amazing  carelessness,  by  both  Bannister  and 
Pagan,  as  to  deprive  their  remarks  upon  the  subject  of  any 
substantial  value. 

1  Life  and  Trials  of  William  Paterson,  by  S.  Bannister,  1858-59. 

2  The  Birthplace  and  Parentage  of  William  Paterson.  By  W.  Pagan.  Edin- 
burgh, 1865. 


William  Pa t  e  rson. 
From  a  wash-drawing  in  the  British  Museum. 


WILLIAM  PATERS  ON  THE  FINANCIER  207 


After  fixing,  according  to  his  belief,  the  place  of  Pater- 
son's  birth  to  a  farm  called  Skipmyre  in  the  parish  of 
Tinwall,  in  the  southern  portion  of  Dumfries  shire,  in 
Scotland1  (of  which  parish,  however,  no  ancient  baptismal 
records  exist),  Bannister  remarks  (page  35):  "The  time  of 
his  birth  can  be  settled  exactly  from  his  will,  in  which  he 
states  himself  to  be,  at  its  date,  the  1st  day  of  July,  1718, 
sixty-three  years  and  three  months  old,  which  refers  his 
birth  to  March  or  April,  1655."  On  page  425  of  his  work, 
Bannister  gives  in  full  (or  in  what  purports  to  be  so)  the  will 
of  William  Paterson,  in  which  there  is  not  the  least  allusion 
to  his  age  ;  nor  is  this  explained  or  corrected  in  a  subsequent 
edition  of  Bannister's  work. 

To  make  matters  worse,  Pagan,  in  his  sketch  of  Paterson's 
life,  says  (page  6)  that  the  will,  as  quoted  by  Mr.  Bannister, 
from  the  record  in  Doctors'  Commons,  London,  runs  as  fol- 
lows, etc.,  etc.:  "In  witness  whereof  I  have  hereto  sub- 
scribed my  name  and  put  my  seal,  at  Westminster  this  1st 
day  of  July,  1718,  in  the  sixtieth  year  and  third  month  of 
my  age.    (Signed)    Wm.  Paterson." 

Under  ordinary  circumstances,  it  would  be  necessary,  first, 
to  resort  to  the  original  will,  to  know  what  this  statement  as 
to  age  really  was  (if  it  existed  in  fact),  and  then  to  examine 
why  this  strange  clause  was  inserted  at  all  in  the  instrument, 
—  for  most  persons  who  are  familiar  with  the  forms  of  Eng- 
lish wills  must  recognize  the  fact  that  a  statement  of  age  is 

1  Not  far  from  where,  in  an  almost  Italian  landscape  of  lakes,  groves,  meadows, 
cornfields,  and  distant  mountains,  Lochmaben  stands,  in  the  vale  of  Annan,  —  the 
land  of  the  Johnstones,  sung  by  many  a  Scottish  poet,  and  enriched  with  many 
a  legend  of  border  warfare  : 

"  As  I  came  by  Locbmaben  gate, 

There  I  saw  the  Johnstones  riding : 
Away  they  go,  and  fear  no  foe, 

Wi'  their  drums  a-beating,  colors  flying. 
A'  the  lads  o'  Annandale 

Came  there  their  valiant  chiefs  to  follow, 
Brave  Burleigh,  Ford,  and  Ramerscale, 

Wi'  Winton,  and  the  gallant  Rollo,"  etc. 


208     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


most  unusual  in  such  documents,  and  is  apparently  made 
for  some  distinct  purpose. 

There  are,  however,  so  many  clear  indications  that  this 
statement  of  age  (either  of  sixty  or  of  sixty-three  years)  is 
erroneous,  and  that  Paterson's  age  must  have  been  at  least 
ten  years  greater  than  the  highest  age  given  above,  that  we 
may  assume,  for  the  present  purpose,  that  one  or  the  other  of 
these  ages  is  really  given  in  the  will,  without  at  all  conceding 
the  accuracy  of  the  statement  there  made.  What  Paterson's 
mental  condition  was  at  the  time  of  making  this  will  (exe- 
cuted only  a  few  months  before  his  death)  we  cannot  tell. 
He  had  undoubtedly  fallen  upon  dark  days,  had  given  up  the 
house  in  Westminster,  in  which  he  had  long  resided ;  and  at 
the  time  of  making  his  will,  he  was  staying  at  the  Ship  Inn 
(on  the  north  side  of  the  Strand,  some  half-dozen  houses  west 
of  old  Temple  Bar,  in  London),  in  a  condition  which  appears 
to  have  approached  destitution.  Whether  age,  poverty, 
disappointments,  and  sickness  may  have  impaired  the  once 
active  memory  of  this  strange  character,  or  whether  the  age 
statement  was  designedly  inserted  to  increase  the  mystery 
about  a  period  of  his  life  which  he  wished  to  remain  obscure, 
one  can  only  surmise.  Some  matters  in  apparent  contradic- 
tion should  now  be  noticed. 

I.  William  Paterson's  ingenious  and  profound  financial 
theories  are  known  to  have  been  elaborated  by  him  and 
brought  to  public  attention  in  several  European  countries 
(though  unsuccessfully)  as  early  as  1686  or  1687,  — at  which 
period,  if  his  age  as  given  in  the  will  is  correct,  he  must  have 
been  only  twenty-eight  or  thirty  years  old.  This,  of  course, 
is  not  impossible,  and  Paterson's  ideas  are  undoubtedly,  to  a 
certain  extent,  the  intuitions  of  genius ;  but  they  are  intui- 
tions founded  upon  a  knowledge  which  must  have  been 
acquired  only  by  long  and  varied  observation  of  human 
nature,  and  by  experience  of  the  most  diverse  business 
operations ;  insomuch  that  it  is  very  difficult  to  believe  that 
he  should  have  been  able  to  acquire  and  to  digest  such 
knowledge  at  the  age  named. 


HODGES'  PAMPHLET  ON  PATERSON  209 


II.  It  seems  to  be  generally  conceded  that  Paterson's 
wandering  life  began  with  his  flight  from  Scotland  in  his 
youth,  to  escape  trouble  arising  in  some  way  out  of  the  reli- 
gious persecutions  under  which  the  Scottish  Presbyterians 
were  suffering  at  the  hands  of  the  dominant  Church  of  Eng- 
land party,  which,  though  few  in  numbers,  became  the 
ruling  faction  at  the  Restoration  of  monarchy  in  Eng- 
land in  1660.  It  appears  to  be  further  conceded  that  after 
a  short  sojourn  in  England,  during  which  he  followed  the 
avocation  of  a  pedler,  he  made  his  way  thence  to  the  West 
Indies. 

In  an  old  pamphlet  in  the  Bodleian  Library,  Mr.  Eliot 
Warburton,  who  wrote  a  semi-historical  romance,  of  which 
Paterson  was  the  hero,  found  it  stated,  as  he  claims,  that 
Paterson's  family,  being  alarmed  by  intelligence  of  warrants 
having  been  issued  against  him,  on  a  charge  of  being  a  con- 
federate of  the  proscribed  Presbyterians,  "  he  went  speedily 
away  into  England,  and  took  refuge  there  with  a  relative  of 
his  mother,  a  widow  at  Bristol." 

A  scurrilous  pamphlet  was  written  by  one  Hodges,  in  the 
interest  of  Paterson's  enemies,  at  the  time  of  the  Darien 
scheme,  or  about  the  year  1699.  In  this  it  is  said  that  he 
"came  from  Scotland  in  his  younger  years,  with  a  pack  on 
his  back,  whereof  the  print  may  be  seen,  if  he  be  alive. 
Having  travelled  this  country  some  years,  he  seated  himself 
under  the  wing  of  a  warm  widow  near  Oxford,  where, 
finding  that  preaching  was  an  easier  trade  than  his  own,  he 
soon  found  himself  gifted  with  an  anaclets  spirit.  Prophets 
being  generally  despised  at  home,  he  went  on  the  propaganda 
fide  account  to  the  West  Indies,  and  was  one  of  those  who 
settled  the  isle  of  Providence  a  second  time.  But  meeting 
some  hardships  and  ill-luck  there,  to  wit,  a  Governor  being 
imposed  on  them  by  the  king  of  England,  which  his  con- 
science could  not  admit  of,  the  prospects  of  their  constitution 
were  altered,  and  they  could  no  longer  have  a  free  port  and 
sanctuary  for  buccaneers,  pirates,  and  such  vermin.  .  .  . 
This  disappointment  obliged  Predicant  Paterson  to  shake 

14 


210     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


the  dust  from  off  his  shoes,  and  leave  that  island  under  his 
anathema."  Now  let  us  see  what  the  reference  to  the  island 
of  Providence  means. 

It  was  about  in  the  year  1664  that  the  freebooter,  Mans- 
veld  (of  unknown  nationality),  who  had  acquired  a  leadership 
among  the  buccaneers  or  piratical  adventurers  who  then 
swarmed  in  the  West  Indies,  conceived  the  design  of  form- 
ing a  permanent  establishment  or  headquarters  upon  one  of 
the  islands  of  the  West  Indian  seas.  The  spot  selected  was 
the  small  island  of  Santa  Catalina,  afterwards  known  as 
Providence,  situated  a  little  more  than  a  hundred  miles  east 
of  the  "Mosquito  Shore"  of  Honduras,  and  some  four  hun- 
dred miles  southwest  of  the  island  of  Jamaica;  it  was  called 
Old  Providence,  to  distinguish  it  from  New  Providence  in 
the  Bahama  Islands.  This  island  was  already  in  the  posses- 
sion of  the  Spaniards,  who  had  fortified  it;  but  in  the  year 
above  named,  Mansveld  attacked  it  with  a  mixed  force  of 
French  and  English  buccaneers,  captured  the  island  with  the 
Spanish  soldiers,  and  established  there  a  garrison  of  his  own 
men.  In  order  to  lend  an  air  of  legitimacy  to  his  operations, 
Mansveld  attempted  to  secure  the  sanction  and  aid  of  the 
English  Governor  of  Jamaica;  this,  however,  he  was  unable 
to  get,  —  not  at  all  on  account  of  the  character  of  his  per- 
formance, but  apparently  because  of  the  jealousy  of  the 
governor.  While  attempting  to  secure  aid  elsewhere,  Mans- 
veld died,  and  the  command  came  to  his  lieutenant,  the 
notorious  Henry  Morgan,  a  Welshman. 

In  the  mean  time,  while  the  affairs  of  the  buccaneers  were 
yet  in  uncertainty,  the  Spaniards,  in  the  summer  of  1665, 
as  we  learn  from  Spanish  authorities,  recaptured  the  island, 
taking  the  garrison  of  buccaneers  prisoners.  Morgan,  how- 
ever, never  lost  sight  of  his  predecessor's  design,  and  after 
some  time  spent  in  recruiting  his  force  of  adventurers,  and 
in  committing  depredations  upon  the  Spaniards,  he  appears 
to  have  regained  possession  of  Old  Providence  at  a  date 
which  is  not  accurately  known,  the  accounts  being  very 


PATERSON  IN  THE  BAHAMAS 


211 


vague  and  conflicting,  but  which  is  supposed  to  have  been 
in  1666  or  1667.1 

Bannister  has  apparently  confounded  this  island  of  Santa 
Catalina,  or  Providence,  with  New  Providence  in  the  Baha- 
mas, for  he  says  (page  45  of  his  work):  "In  a  contemporary 
tract,  written  by  James  Hodges,  who  was  then  employed  by 
the  English  minister  to  attack  the  Scottish  Company,  it  is 
asserted  that  Paterson  joined  in  the  settlement  of  New  Provi- 
dence in  the  Bahamas,2  a  highly  probable  fact." 

Now  as  for  this  latter  island,  its  history,  in  brief,  is  this : 
it  was  first  settled  in  1629  by  the  English,  and  was  held  by 
them  till  1611,  when  they  were  expelled  by  the  Spaniards. 
The  latter,  however,  did  not  attempt  to  establish  themselves 
upon  this  island,  and  it  remained  unoccupied  till  the  year 
1667,  when  it  was  again  taken  possession  of  by  the  English, 
—  at  which  date  William  Paterson  was  only  ten  or  twelve 
years  old,  if  the  statement  in  the  will  is  correct;  so  that  it 
would  not  at  all  be  "a  highly  probable  fact"  that  he  was 
"one  of  those  who  settled  the  isle  of  Providence  a  second 
time,"  but,  on  the  contrary,  highly  improbable. 

The  reference  by  Hodges,  however,  to  Paterson's  presence 
at  the  island  of  Providence  is  so  distinctly  in  the  nature  of  a 
slur,  and  derives  its  point  so  directly  from  his  alleged  connec- 
tion with  the  buccaneers,  that  one  can  scarcely  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  any  other  meaning  was  intended  by  that 

1  The  island  was  retaken  by  Morgan  in  all  probability  before  the  treaty  of 
13-23  May,  1667,  concluded  between  Great  Britain  and  Spain  at  Madrid,  by 
which  the  occupation  of  several  disputed  territories  by  the  respective  powers  was 
ratified  and  confirmed  to  each.  It  is  thought  by  the  writer  to  be  this  sort  of 
legalization  of  possession  and  its  attendant  results  which  are  referred  to  by 
Hodges  in  the  extract  given  in  the  text,  when  he  speaks  of  a  governor  being 
imposed  on  the  so-called  "  settlers  "  of  the  island  of  Providence.  This  treaty  of 
1667,  though  it  was  immediately  and  grossly  violated  by  the  buccaneers,  was  pre- 
served by  the  terms  of  the  more  elaborate  and  better-known  treaty  of  peace  and 
amity,  oblivion  of  injuries,  etc.,  negotiated  between  the  two  countries  by  Lord 
Godolphin  in  the  year  1670  :  "  Que  de  ninguna  manera  se  entiendan  abolidos 
6  derogados  por  los  presentes  articulos  y  convenciones  el  tratado  de  paz  6  amistad 
ajustado  en  Madrid  el  dia  if  de  Mayo,"  etc. 

2  This  is  merely  Bannister's  inference.  The  pamphlet  does  not  say  so  at  all, 
as  will  be  seen  from  the  quotation  above. 


212     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


writer  than  that  Paterson  was  present  at  the  first  or  second 
capture  of  Santa  Catalina.  The  importance  of  Hodges ' 
statement,  however,  lies  not  in  its  proving  or  tending  to 
prove  that  Paterson  actually  was  at  either  Providence  or 
New  Providence  in  the  years  1664  to  1667,  but  that  his 
contemporaries  generally  must  have  ascribed  to  him  an  age 
sufficiently  great  to  have  relieved  this  statement  from  the 
charge  of  absurdity  to  which  it  would  have  been  open,  had 
Paterson  been  born  in  the  year  1658  or  in  1655;  in  other 
words,  that  he  was  generally  considered  at  the  time  of 
Hodges'  pamphlet,  in  1699,  to  be  a  man  of  fifty  years  of  age 
and  over,  rather  than  of  about  forty. 

III.  It  has  been  already  stated  that  writers  are  agreed 
that  William  Paterson's  departure  from  Scotland  was  in 
some  manner  owing  to  the  persecutions  by  the  Church  of 
England  party  against  the  Scottish  Presbyterians.  These 
persecutions  had  their  origin  in  what  is  known  in  English 
Church  history  as  the  "Act  of  Uniformity,"  of  October, 
1662,  under  which  the  Scottish  clergymen  were  ordered  to 
conform  to  the  rites  of  the  Church  of  England.  Refusing  to 
do  so,  most  of  them  were  driven  from  their  pulpits ;  and  as 
they  persisted  in  preaching  at  what  were  known  as  conven- 
ticles, or  gatherings  in  private  houses,  or  in  the  woods  and 
fields,  a  severe  act  against  this  practice  was  passed  in  1664 ; 
and  this  proving  ineffectual,  in  1665  a  force  of  troops  was 
sent  into  the  west  of  Scotland  to  put  down  the  refractory 
clergy  and  their  supporters;  and  during  the  period  from 
1665  to  1667,  the  troops  being  then  commanded  by  Sir  James 
Turner  and  the  notorious  "Tom  Dalziel,"  great  cruelties 
were  inflicted  upon  the  unfortunate  Presbyterians,  and  multi- 
tudes of  them  were  compelled  to  fly  from  the  country.  The 
persecutions  by  the  English  Church  party  were  spasmodic  in 
their  nature.  A  lull  followed  Dalziel's  bloody  performances, 
and  then,  in  1669  and  1670,  persecution  again  broke  out, 
and  many  more  of  the  Scots  fled  from  their  country.  It  is 
evident,  however,  that  if  the  dates  of  Paterson's  birth,  as 


PATERSON'S  PRESENCE  IN  NEW  YORK  213 


given  by  Bannister  and  by  Pagan,  — 1655  or  1658,  —  are, 
either  of  them,  correct,  it  could  have  been  neither  of  these 
persecutions  that  drove  William  Paterson  out  of  Scotland.1 
A  long  period  of  inaction  now  followed,  while  the  English 
court  was  coquetting  with  the  dissenters,  in  order  to  gain 
their  political  support;  and  it  was  not  until  1679-80,  the 
period  of  the  murder  of  Archbishop  Sharpe  and  of  the 
battle  of  Bothwell  Brigg,  that  the  non-conformists  again 
felt  the  heavy  hand  of  the  government,  at  which  time  the 
allusions  referred  to  above,  as  to  Paterson's  subsequently 
taking  part  in  the  settlement  of  the  island  of  Providence, 
etc.,  would  have  lost  all  meaning. 

If  William  Paterson,  the  financier  and  statesman  of  Great 
Britain,  was  born  in  the  year  1655,  or  in  1658,  we  know 
nothing  definite,  and  are  not  likely  to  ever  know  anything 
of  his  early  history,  because  all  the  theories  which  we  can 
reasonably  form  seem  to  be  met  by  apparently  irreconcilable 
facts.  If,  on  the  contrary,  Paterson  was  a  man  at  least  ten 
years  older,  we  have  certainly  a  succession  of  events  which 
are  not  only  consistent  with  the  historical  data  which  we 
have  respecting  him,  but  are  also  consistent  with  his  having 
been  a  resident  of  New  York  and  of  Albany  in  the  years 
1668-69.  In  this  aspect  of  the  case  one  might  readily  form 
a  theory  that  William  Paterson,  —  then  a  young  man  of 
eighteen  or  nineteen,  —  driven  from  his  home  in  Scotland  by 
the  Conventicle  Act  of  1664,  had  found  his  way  to  the  West 
Indies,  and  had  placed  himself  under  Morgan's  command,  in 
time  to  take  part  in  the  capture  of  the  island  of  Providence 
in  about  the  year  1666;  and  that  after  the  treaty  of  1667, 
either  tiring  of  his  connection  with  his  rough  associates,  or 
the  strong  moral  sense  with  which  he  was  undoubtedly 
endowed,  rebelling  against  their  performances,  he  had 
quitted  his  companions  and  made  his  way  to  New  York  in 
the  next  year.  We  have  even  the  fact  that  in  1668,  a 
piratical  or  quasi-piratical  vessel  actually  arrived  at  New 

1  The  so-called  Conventicle  Act  and  its  penalties  only  applied  to  persons  over 
sixteen  years  of  age. 


2U     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


York  from  the  West  Indies,  and  was  the  subject  of  certain 
proceedings  there  in  the  Court  of  Admiralty.  This  was  the 
so-called  privateer  "Cedar."  She  seems  to  have  been  a 
Spanish  vessel  which  had  recently  been  captured  with  a 
cargo  of  Campeachy  wood,  in  the  West  Indies,  by  Captain 
Thomas  Salter  of  Port  Royal  in  the  island  of  Jamaica,  who 
is  described  as  "commander  of  a  private  man-of-war."  Salter 
placed  a  crew  upon  the  vessel,  under  the  command  of  Wil- 
liam Smith  as  master,  with  orders  to  carry  her  to  Jamaica; 
but  Captain  Smith  determined  to  make  a  voyage  on  his  own 
account,  and  accordingly  sailed  for  New  York.  Whom  the 
vessel  brought  with  her  we  do  not  know,  as  the  proceedings 
only  allude  incidentally  to  a  few  of  the  crew ;  but  it  is  cer- 
tain that  the  first  information  we  have  of  William  Paterson 
in  New  York  was  very  soon  after  the  arrival  of  this  vessel. 
If,  as  a  matter  of  conjecture  (for  there  is  certainly  no  proof), 
any  portion  of  the  spoils  of  the  Spaniards  in  the  West  Indies 
—  or  possibly  of  Morgan's  sack  of  the  town  of  Porto  Bello, 
in  1668  —  actually  went  into  the  purchase  of  Paterson's 
various  parcels  of  real  estate  in  New  York,  he  was  fully 
confirmed  in  its  possession,  and  released  from  any  possible 
apprehensions  of  the  criminal  law,  by  Lord  Godolphin's 
"Treaty  of  Oblivion"  with  Spain,  which  was  promulgated 
in  July,  1669, 1  though  it  was  not  formally  ratified  by  the 
British  and  Spanish  governments  till  the  following  }^ear.  It 
will  be  noticed  that  this  date  coincides  closely  with  Pater- 
son's departure  from  New  York  and  his  presumed  return  to 
Europe. 

i  See  Bridges,  "  Annals  of  Jamaica,"  page  266.  This  famous  treaty  contains 
the  following  provisions  (Article  VII.)  :  "Que  todas  las  ofensas,  perdidas,  danos 
e  injurias  que  las  naciones  Espanola  e  inglesa  huvieron  padecido  reciprocamente 
en  la  America  en  qualesquiera  tiempos  passados,  por  qualquier  causa  d  pretexto 
por  una  6  otra  de  las  partes,  se  pongan  en  olvido,  y  se  borren  enteramente  de  la 
memoria,  como  si  nunca  huviessen  succedido." 

"  That  all  offences,  losses,  depredations,  and  wrongs  which  the  Spanish  and 
English  nations  shall  have  reciprocally  suffered  in  America,  in  whatever  times 
past,  upon  whatever  cause  or  pretext,  upon  either  side,  shall  be  buried  in  oblivion 
and  entirely  banished  from  memory,  as  if  they  had  never  happened." 


SIGNATURES  OF  PATERSON 


215 


There  is  another  matter  of  some  importance  which  remains 
to  be  considered.  In  the  Colonial  Records  at  Albany  we 
possess  two  of  the  original  signatures  of  William  Paterson  of 
New  York.  One  of  these  is  affixed  to  the  complaint  made 
by  him  against  Captain  Baker,  already  alluded  to;  the  other, 
to  a  bond  given  by  Paterson  to  prosecute  that  officer.  Upon 
comparing  these  signatures  with  the  known  signatures  of 
William  Paterson,  the  Scottish  statesman,  much  apparent 
dissimilarity  appears  on  a  casual  view.  Examining  them, 
however,  more  carefully,  we  find  that  the  apparent  difference 
is  chiefly  owing  to  a  series  of  complicated  and  clumsy  flour- 
ishes at  the  beginning  and  at  the  end  of  the  signatures  of 
1669.  Leaving  these  out  of  view,  and  remembering  that  — 
upon  the  theory  that  the  signatures  were  made  by  the  same 
individual  —  we  are  comparing  the  handwriting  of  a  very 
young  man,  of  not  much  school  education,  and  fresh  from  a 
life  of  hardship  and  adventure,  with  that  made  forty  or  fifty 
years  later  by  the  fluent  writer  and  pamphleteer,  deeply 
immersed  in  important  political  and  business  enterprises,  — 
and  there  certainly  seems  to  be  a  very  striking,  indeed, 
almost  startling  resemblance  between  the  signatures.  The 
very  peculiar  form  of  the  capital  letter  P  will  be  noticed  at 
once.    A  comparison  of  the  signatures  is  as  follows:  — 


1.  Signature  of  William  Paterson  to  the  complaint  against 
Captain  Baker,  August  14,  1669. 1 


1  From  N.  Y.  Colonial  MSS.  Vol.  22,  page  78. 


216     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


2.  Same  from  bond  or  recognizance  of  Paterson  to  prose- 
cute Captain  Baker  for  burglary,  etc.,  August  19,  1669. 1 


3.  From  an  original  letter  of  1699  in  the  Advocates 
Library,  Edinburgh.    (Taken  from  Bannister's  Work.) 


4.  From  an  original  letter  in  the  British  State  Paper 
Office,  of  December  18,  1718.    (From  Bannister's  Work.) 

As  to  the  body  of  the  documents  in  the  Colonial  Records 
which  have  just  been  alluded  to,  they  are  evidently  drawn 
up  by  another  hand,  doubtless  either  by  an  attorney  or  by 
the  court  clerk ;  but  the  language  of  the  complaint  is,  in  all 
probability,  that  of  the  complainant  himself.  Now  those 
familiar  with  the  writings  of  the  financier  and  statesman  will 
remember  that  he  is  exceedingly  prone  to  allude  frequently, 
in  a  reverent  manner,  to  the  interpositions  of  Divine  Provi- 
dence in  the  affairs  of  men.  His  account  of  the  Darien 
expedition,  especially,  contains  many  such  allusions,  and 
one  can  hardly  peruse  them  without  recurring  at  once  to  the 
words  of  the  complaint  at  Albany:  "he  came  in  with  his 
sword  drawn  and  pointed  at  this  complainant,  with  intent  to 

l  From  N.  Y.  Col.  MSS.,  Vol.  22,  page  89. 


MYSTERY  OF  PATERSON'S  LIFE 


217 


have  killed  him,  which  he  likewise  would  have  done,  in  case 
it  was  not  hindered  by  the  Providence  of  God." 

In  studying  the  life  of  William  Paterson,  as  presented  to 
us  by  his  biographers,  one  receives  the  impression  that  he 
is  considering  the  career  of  a  man  of  strong  and  vigorous 
character,  of  great  natural  abilities,  of  wide  experience  of 
men  and  of  affairs,  it  is  true ;  but  still  of  one  who  has  been 
exalted  by  circumstances  into  a  position  of  great  public 
prominence,1  beyond  what  he  could  have  anticipated,  or 
perhaps  even  have  hoped  for.  Some  unknown  sentiment, 
however,  possibly  pride,  or  possibly  a  sense  of  moral  pro- 
priety, seems  to  be  operating  constantly  upon  him,  inducing 
him  to  throw  himself  into  the  background,  as  it  were,  and  to 
cover  his  own  individuality  with  an  air  of  mystery  and  of 
obscurity,  especially  in  so  far  as  his  early  life  was  concerned. 
Deeply  interested  in,  and  intimately  acquainted  with,  the 
trade  of  the  West  Indies,  as  he  was,  and  voluminous  writer 
as  he  was  upon  that  subject, —  projector  of  the  Darien  colony, 
in  which  expedition  he  took  a  personal  part  and  of  which  he 
has  given  a  long  account, —  he  affords  us  nowhere  any  definite 
information  as  to  how  he  acquired  his  knowledge  relating  to 
those  parts  of  the  globe,  or  as  to  his  personal  experiences 
there,  except  the  one  allusion  which  seems,  as  it  were,  to 
escape  from  him  inadvertently,  when  speaking  of  his  en- 
countering in  the  West  Indies,  upon  the  Darien  expedition 

1  "The  great  projector,"  says  Macaulay,  in  speaking  of  the  Darien  scheme, 
"  was  the  idol  of  the  whole  nation.  Men  spoke  to  him  with  more  profound 
respect  than  to  the  Lord  High  Commissioner.  His  antechamber  was  crowded 
witli  solicitors  desirous  to  catch  some  drops  of  that  golden  shower  of  which  he 
was  supposed  to  be  the  dispenser.  To  be  seen  walking  with  him  in  the  High 
Street,  to  be  honored  by  him  with  a  private  interview  of  a  quarter  of  an  hour, 
were  enviable  distinctions."  And  again  :  "His  countenance,  his  voice,  his  ges- 
tures, indicated  boundless  self-importance.  When  he  appeared  in  public  he 
looked  —  such  is  the  language  of  one  who  probably  had  often  seen  him  —  like 
Atlas,  conscious  that  a  world  was  on  his  shoulders.  But  the  airs  which  he  gave 
himself  only  heightened  the  respect  and  admiration  which  he  inspired.  His 
demeanor  was  regarded  as  a  model.  Scotchmen,  who  wished  to  be  thought  wise, 
looked  as  like  Paterson  as  they  could." 


218     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


iu  1698,  a  certain  Captain  Richard  Moon,  he  says:  "This 
man  I  had  known  in  Jamaica  many  years  before."1 

Was  William  Paterson's  strange  self-concealment  due  to 
the  unhappy  experiences  of  his  younger  years  in  the  West 
Indies  and  in  New  York,  which  (after  the  fashion  of  Lord 
Godolphin  with  the  exploits  of  the  English  freebooters)  he 
wished  to  be  "  buried  in  oblivion,  and  entirely  banished  from 
memory  "  ?  We  can  only  answer  in  the  favorite  words  of  the 
Jewish  historian,  Josephus,  when  he  encounters  a  particu- 
larly knotty  question  of  history  or  of  human  conduct:  "Now 
as  to  these  matters  let  every  one  determine  as  he  pleases." 

To  the  eastward  of  the  house  and  land  of  Charles  Bridges 
(formerly  that  of  Thomas  Willet)  was,  at  the  time  of  our 
survey,  a  narrow  lane,  leading  from  the  High  Street  down  to 
the  East  River  shore.  This  lane,  which  occupied  the  site  of 
the  present  building,  No.  52  Stone  Street,  and  which  has 
been  previously  alluded  to,2  is  shown  upon  "The  Duke's 
Plan,"  of  1661,  but  appears  to  have  been  closed  within  the 
next  two  or  three  years,3  as  it  is  not  shown  upon  the  Nicoll 
map  of  about  1666;  it  is,  however,  alluded  to  in  a  deed  of 
1672,  as  "a  certain  narrow  lane,"  and  may  have  been  still 
used,  in  part,  as  a  private  lane  at  the  latter  date.  This  lane 
separated  the  original  grant  of  Thomas  Willet  from  that  of 
his  English  neighbor,  Richard  Smith. 

Richard  Smith,  a  native  of  Gloucestershire,  in  England, 
was  one  of  the  pioneers  of  the  New  England  settlements. 

1  Paterson  arrived  at  New  York  in  August,  1699,  on  his  return  from  the 
Darien  Expedition.  He  was  at  this  time,  as  he  tells  us,  so  sick  that  his  life  was 
despaired  of.  The  order  permitting  him  to  bring  his  baggage  ashore  is  to  be 
found  in  the  Council  Minutes ;  it  bears  date  Aug.  23,  1699. 

2  See  ante,  page  172. 

8  On  the  the  28th  of  March,  1658,  Solomon  La  Chair,  who  at  that  time  had 
a  lot  upon  which  he  kept  a  small  tavern,  which  lot  immediately  adjoined  the 
lane  referred  to  above,  on  the  west,  requested  of  the  burgomasters  to  know 
"  whether  the  street  lying  beside  his  lot  to  the  left  of  Carel  van  Brugge,  and 
bought  from  him,  shall  be  given  for  a  lot,  or  if  a  street  shall  remain."  To  this 
request,  the  magistrates  caused  a  reply  to  be  made,  that  "  the  street  remains 
provisionally  for  the  use  of  the  city  till  further  order." 


RICHARD  SMITH 


219 


He  came  at  an  early  day  to  Plymouth  Colony,  and  was  one 
of  the  principal  men  among  those  who,  pushing  out  through 
the  sandy  forests  westwards,  a  score  of  miles  or  more, 
founded  the  old  town  of  Taunton,  where  the  dark  waters  of 
the  Taunton  River  flowed  sluggishly  through  overhanging 
woods  and  bushes.  Smith  appears  to  have  been  a  man  of 
some  independence  in  his  views  upon  church  dogmas,  —  like 
Roger  Williams,  with  whom  he  was  intimately  connected; 
and  his  intolerant  associates  in  the  Taunton  settlement 
annoying  him  on  this  account,  he  removed  still  further  to 
the  west,  and,  having  purchased  a  tract  of  land  from  the 
Indians,  on  the  west  side  of  Narragansett  Bay,  he  erected  a 
trading  house,  about  1638,  in  what  is  now  North  Kingston, 
in  the  State  of  Rhode  Island, —  his  nearest  English  neighbors 
for  several  years  being  at  Warwick,  nearly  ten  miles  up  the 
bay. 

It  was  probably  at  Taunton  that  Richard  Smith  became 
acquainted  with  the  Reverend  Francis  Doughty,  a  dissenting 
English  clergyman,  who  had  come  over  to  the  Plymouth 
Colony,  hoping  to  enjoy  liberty  of  conscience  there,  but  who 
was  harassed  and  forced  to  take  refuge  beyond  the  Narragan- 
sett Bay,  much  as  Richard  Smith  had  been.  These  men, 
with  a  few  others,  resolved  to  resort  to  New  Amsterdam  in 
search  of  a  settlement;  and  there,  on  the  28th  of  March, 
16-1:2,  Francis  Doughty  obtained,  for  the  benefit  of  himself 
and  of  his  associates,  from  Director-General  Kieft,  a  patent 
for  more  than  thirteen  thousand  acres,  forming  the  larger 
portion  of  the  subsequent  town  of  Newtown,  upon  Long 
Island,  in  the  present  Borough  of  Queens,  New  York  City. 
Richard  Smith  seems  to  have  taken  part  in  the  settlement 
which  was  immediately  commenced  near  the  Mespat  Kill 
(now  Newtown  Creek),  and  it  seems  quite  probable  that 
"Smith's  Island,"  a  small  island  in  the  Newtown  Creek, 
upon  which,  some  ten  or  twelve  years  later,  it  was  proposed 
to  establish  a  village  to  be  called  Arnhem,  received  its 
name  from  this  man. 

In  1643,  after  the  breaking  out  of  the  Indian  war,  the 


220     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


settlement  along  the  Mespat  Kill  was  destroyed  by  the 
natives ;  and  Richard  Smith,  in  order  to  attend  to  his  inter- 
ests here,  probably  found  it  necessary  to  establish  a  residence 
in  New  Amsterdam,  which  he  did  by  acquiring,  in  1645,  the 
plot  upon  Hoogh  Straet  which  we  are  now  considering,  and 
by  building  a  house  for  himself  about  upon  the  site  of  the 
present  warehouse,  No.  56  Stone  Street.  The  building 
would  appear  to  have  been  of  the  usual  English  cottage 
type,  —  a  low  double  house,  broad  side  to  the  street,  —  for, 
in  1651,  we  are  informed,  in  an  instrument  affecting  the 
property,  that  the  east  end  of  the  structure  was  then  occu- 
pied by  one  Randel  Hewit. 

Smith  himself,  in  all  probability,  only  made  occasional  use 
of  this  house,  either  for  a  residence  or  for  storehouse  pur- 
poses. He  still  retained  his  trading  house  on  Narragansett 
Bay,  and  as  early  as  1651  he  was  the  master  of  a  coasting 
vessel,  — a  bark  called  the  "  Welcome,"  with  which  he  made 
occasional  voyages  to  the  Dutch  settlements  on  the  South  or 
Delaware  River.1  His  New  Amsterdam  possessions  appear 
to  have  been,  much  of  the  time,  under  the  care  of  his  son, 
Richard  Smith,  junior,  —  who  afterwards  became  prominent 
as  the  patentee  of  most  of  the  territory  now  known  as  Smith- 
town,  in  Suffolk  County  on  Long  Island,  bearing  there  the 
appellation  of  Richard  Smith,  senior,  to  distinguish  him  from 
his  son  Richard,  grandson  of  the  original  colonist. 

Richard  Smith  seems  to  have  been  somewhat  unfortunate 
with  his  property  in  New  Amsterdam.    As  early  as  1651, 

1  The  nature  of  a  part  of  Smith's  trading  operations  appears  in  a  suit  brought 
by  him  against  Cornelis  Melyn  of  Staten  Island,  in  1660.  It  seems  that  about 
the  year  1655,  Melyn  was  owing  Smith  something  like  nine  pounds  sterling; 
and  the  latter  agreed  to  take,  in  satisfaction  for  his  debt,  "  two  ankers  of  strong 
waters,"  which  were  to  be  delivered  to  him  at  Melyn's  house  upon  Staten  Island. 
Smith,  however,  delayed  removing  his  property  until  the  Indian  War  of  1655 
broke  out,  in  which  the  Indians  destroyed  Melyn's  house  and  made  short  work 
of  Richard  Smith's  "  strong  waters."  Subsequently,  during  Melyn's  absence  in 
the  Netherlands,  Smith  came  with  several  Englishmen,  and,  as  was  claimed  by 
Melyn,  terrified  the  wife  of  the  latter  into  signing  a  promissory  note  as  agent  of 
her  husband,  for  the  amount  of  the  original  debt.  The  matter  appears  to  have 
been  compromised  between  the  parties. 


RICHARD  SMITH'S  HOUSE  221 


he  had  sold  the  house  to  one  Gillis  Pietersen,  but  appears  to 
have  soon  had  it  back  upon  his  hands,  probably  by  virtue  of 
a  mortgage  which  he  held.  During  the  long  absences  of 
himself  and  of  his  son,  the  place  appears  to  have  become 
neglected.  The  easternmost  lot  of  the  property  having  been 
sold  within  a  year  or  so  after  the  time  of  our  survey,  to  the 
glassmaker,  Evert  Duyckingh,  who  had  built  upon  it,  we 
find,  in  1659,  the  burgomasters  of  the  town,  who  erroneously 
supposed  that  Duyckingh  owned  the  whole  parcel,  serving  a 
notice  upon  him  to  improve  the  same ;  in  answer  to  this  he 
appears  before  the  magistrates,  and  disclaims  the  ownership 
of  the  property,  but  says  that  he  is  authorized  by  the  owner 
to  sell  it,  and  that  "  Mr.  Smit  himself  has  valued  it  at  five 
hundred  beavers."  By  1662,  Smith  had  succeeded  in  clos- 
ing out  his  interests  in  New  Amsterdam,  his  house  and  most 
of  the  plot  of  land  having  been  sold  to  one  Jan  Hendricksen 
Stilman,  a  well-known  character  of  the  town,  to  whom  the 
nickname  of  Koopal,  or  "Buy  Everything"  had  been  given 
by  his  neighbors;  the  house,  at  this  time,  is  somewhat 
dubiously  described  as  "a  superstructure." 

This  transaction  apparently  terminated  the  connection  of 
Richard  Smith  with  the  town  of  New  Amsterdam.  He  lived 
for  a  number  of  years  afterwards,  and  is  spoken  of  in  terms 
of  warm  esteem  by  his  friend,  the  famous  Roger  Williams. 
"Mr.  Richard  Smith,"  says  the  latter,  writing  in  1679,  "for 
his  conscience  to  God,  left  fair  possessions  in  Glostershire, 
and  adventured,  with  his  relations  and  estates  to  N.  Eng- 
land, and  was  a  most  acceptable  inhabitant  and  prime  leading 
man  in  Taunton,  in  Plymouth  Colony.  For  his  conscience 
sake,  many  differences  arising,  he  left  Taunton  and  came  to 
the  Nahiggonsik  country,  where  by  God's  Mercy,  and  the 
favor  of  the  Nahiggonsik  sachems,  he  broke  the  ice  at  his 
great  charge  and  hazard,  and  put  up  in  the  thickest  of  the 
barbarians,  the  first  English  house  amongst  them.  .  .  .  He 
kept  possession,  coming  and  going,  himself,  children,  and 
servants,  and  he  had  quiet  possession  of  his  housing,  lands, 
and  meadow ;  and  there,  in  his  own  house,  with  much  seren- 


222     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


ity  of  soul  and  comfort,  he  yielded  up  his  spirit  to  God,  the 
Father  of  Spirits,  in  peace." 

A  short  distance  east  of  Richard  Smith's  plot  of  ground 
upon  the  East  River,  the  land  between  the  road  and  the  river 
shore  was  intersected  by  the  gully  or  ravine,  known  as 
"Burger's  Path."  A  small  parcel  of  ground  intervened, 
however,  containing  about  fifty  English  feet  front  upon  the 
road,  or  Hoogh  Straet,  and  extending  some  eighty  feet  or 
thereabouts  to  the  crumbling  bank  above  the  beach.  Upon 
this  ground,  just  about  at  the  period  of  our  survey,  Abraham 
Martensen  Clock  and  Tryntje,  his  huysvrouw,  had  built  for 
themselves  a  small  house.  This  stood  apparently  near  the 
bank  of  the  river,  and  about  at  the  southwestern  corner  of  the 
site  of  the  modern  building  now  known  as  the  Old  Cotton 
Exchange.  Abraham  Clock  received  his  ground-brief  for 
this  parcel  of  land  in  the  year  1655,  it  being  described  as  a 
"lot  on  the  east  side  of  the  lot  of  Richard  Smith,  and  on  the 
west  side  of  the  road  which  Burger  Joris  uses  to  go  to  the 
river  side."  The  premises  seem  to  have  contained  a  well  of 
some  repute,  the  site  of  which  is  clearly  marked  in  the  con- 
veyances of  this  property,  and  which  may,  indeed,  still  exist 
under  the  Old  Cotton  Exchange  which  at  the  present  day 
covers  Abraham  Clock's  modest  holding,  —  house-site,  gar- 
den, and  all.  This  well  was  at  the  right  of  the  entrance  to 
the  modern  building,  upon  Hanover  Square,  and  about  eigh- 
teen feet  back  from  the  street  line. 

Of  Abraham  Clock,  but  little  is  known;  he  was  living 
here  as  late  as  1664,  but  died  within  a  few  years  after  that 
date.  One  of  the  trials  of  his  humble  life  at  this  spot  was 
that  his  plot  of  ground  was  subject  to  the  encroachments  of 
the  waves  at  high  tides.  Later,  in  1672,  when  his  widow, 
Tryntje,  had  been  ordered  to  fill  out  the  street,  or  Waal,  in 
front  of  her  premises,  and  also  the  hollow  way  upon  the  east, 
she  declared  herself  unable  to  have  the  work  done ;  and  the 
magistrates  of  the  city  decided  to  render  her  special  aid,  "  as 
she  has  so  much  to  do." 


CHAPTER  XVII 


HANOVER  SQUARE  AND  BURGER'S  PATH.  — BURGER  JORIS- 
SEN,  THE  SMITH.  — THE  THIRTY  YEARS'  WAR.  —  HEN- 
DRICK  JANSEN,  THE  TAILOR,  AND  HIS  OPINION  OF 
DIRECTOR  KIEFT.  —  SMITH  STREET 

"  That  f rae  November  till  October, 
Ae  market-day  thon  was  nae  sober ; 
That  ilka  melder  wi*  the  miller, 
Thou  sat  as  lang  as  thou  had  siller ; 
That  ev'ry  naig  was  ea'd  a  shoe  on, 
The  smith  and  thee  gat  roaring  fou  on." 

Burns  :  "  Tarn  o'  Shanter." 

WE  are  at  Hanover  Square,  —  not  a  very  stately  locality, 
perhaps;  but  a  place  replete  with  historical  associa- 
tions,—  of  Burger  Jorissen,  rough  and  intemperate  at  times, 
but  a  vigorous  pioneer  of  the  new  colony ;  of  Hendrick  Jansen, 
the  virulent  enemy  of  Director  Kieft;  of  Govert  Loocker- 
mans,  the  shipping  merchant,  a  pioneer  of  the  commerce  of 
New  Amsterdam,  as  enterprising  in  his  way  upon  the  sea  as 
was  Burger  Jorissen  upon  the  land.  Half  of  the  political 
history  of  the  colony,  during  the  reign  of  William  III.,  centres 
about  this  spot,  with  its  memories  of  Nicholas  Bayard,  of  the 
judicially  murdered  Leisler  and  Milborne,  and  of  the  patient 
and  long-suffering  Elsie  Leisler  and  her  widowed  daughter 
Mary  Milborne.  The  tortuous  policy  of  King  William's 
government  with  the  piratical  adventurers,  too,  should  not  be 
forgotten ;  and  there  are  not  wanting  associations  here  to  call 
up  the  names  of  the  Earl  of  Bellomont  and  of  Captain 
William  Kidd.  The  Square  might  well  have  received  the 
name  of  Orange,  or  of  Nassau,  as  representative  of  King  Wil- 
liam's times,  but  it  was  named  at  a  somewhat  later  date, 


224     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


when  the  elector  of  Hanover  came  to  the  throne.  The  Scotch 
Jacobites,  at  this  time,  with  their  bitter  hatred  of  what  they 
considered  as  the  usurpation  of  a  petty  German  prince,  were 
singing : 

"  Wha  the  deil  hae  we  gotten  now  for  a  king, 

But  a  wee,  wee  German  lairdie ! 
And  when  we  gaed  to  bring  him  hame, 

He  was  delving  in  his  kail-yardie ; 
Sheughing  kail  and  laying  leeks, 
Wi'out  the  hose  and  but  the  breeks  ; 
And  up  his  beggar  duds  he  cleeks,  — 

The  wee,  wee  German  lairdie." 

The  Hanoverian  party  was  in  control,  however,  and  the 
little  triangular  patch  of  ground  in  New  York  received  the 
name  of  Hanover  Square,  in  honor  of  King  George  I. 

It  is  not,  we  have  said,  a  very  stately  locality.  The  tall 
buildings  of  the  Coffee  and  of  the  Cotton  Exchanges  look 
down  upon  an  open  space  covered  with  smooth  asphalt  over 
which  crowds  stream  in  all  directions,  —  mainly  to  and  from 
the  station  of  the  elevated  railway  which  mars  its  southern 
side ;  no  sprig  of  green  vegetation  is  in  sight,  and  warehouses 
along  the  south  side  of  Pearl  Street  cut  off  all  view  of  the  river. 

A  very  different  scene  presented  itself  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  however.  Then,  from  the  narrow  roadway  along  the 
north  side  of  the  "  square,"  all  the  intervening  ground,  to  the 
river's  edge  beyond  the  present  Pearl  Street,  was  a  grassy 
bank  shaded  by  native  forest  trees,  under  which  strollers 
from  the  town  sometimes  whiled  the  time  away,  or  visiting 
Indians  camped.  Immediately  in  front  of  the  spot  where  now 
stands  the  building  known  as  the  Old  Cotton  Exchange,  a 
gully  or  shallow  ravine  led  down  to  the  river  beach ;  this  had 
been  deepened,  for  the  purpose  of  making  a  passage  or  cart- 
way to  the  shore,  by  Burger  Jorissen;  insomuch  that  in 
1646  the  council  made  an  order  that  he  "  must  rail  or  fence 
the  road  which  is  made  before  his  door,  so  that  no  persons 
may  fall  in ;  and  that  it  be  a  good  wagon  road."  1    This  pas- 

1  The  condition  of  this  locality  in  1679  is  shown  in  the  plate  at  page  188  of 
this  work. 


THE  THIRTY  YEARS'  WAR  225 


sage  way  was  known  as  u  Burger's  Path  "  for  more  than  a 
century.  Nearly  opposite  it,  upon  the  north  side  of  Hoogh 
Straet,  just  about  at  the  little  bookstore  in  the  rear  portion  of 
the  building,  now  (1901)  occupying  the  northwest  corner  of 
William  and  Stone  streets,  stood  the  house  built  about  1614 
by  Hendrick  Jansen,  the  tailor,  but  soon  sold  to  Burger 
Jorissen.  Immediately  east  of  this,  at  the  present  corner  of 
the  last-mentioned  streets,  but  infringing  somewhat  upon 
Stone  Street  (which  has  been  straightened),  was  the  black- 
smith's shop  of  Jorissen.  William  Street  did  not  as  yet  exist, 
and  its  ground,  with  about  half  of  the  New  Cotton  Exchange 
upon  the  east  of  it,  formed  originally  Burger  Jorissen's  gar- 
den, and  possibly  a  small  orchard,  —  for  his  plot  contained 
about  three-quarters  of  an  acre  of  land.  About  a  hundred 
and  twenty-five  feet  farther  down  the  road  stood  the  comfort- 
able residence  of  Govert  Loockermans,  in  a  large  enclosure  of 
ground  sloping  down  to  a  small  pond,  and  with  green  fields 
behind  it;  a  small  intermediate  house  stood  along  the  road 
which  seems  to  have  been  at  an  earlier  date  the  dwelling- 
house  of  Dirck  Cornelissen,  and  to  have  passed  into  the  posses- 
sion of  Loockermans  upon  his  marriage  to  Dirck  Cornelissen's 
widow.  A  short  distance,  still  farther,  at  a  small  turn  in  the 
road,  stood  two  or  three  more  houses,  one  of  which  was  the 
old  tavern  of  Sergeant  Daniel  Litscho,  and  these  were  the  last 
buildings  towards  the  city  gate  at  the  present  Wall  Street. 

Burger  Jorissen  was,  in  all  probability,  a  refugee  of  the 
Thirty  Years'  War.  That  terrible  struggle,  which  desolated 
the  Germanic  countries  from  1618  to  1648,  undoubtedly 
played  a  part  which  has  never  been  fully  appreciated,  in  the 
colonization  of  New  Netherland.  It  was  a  conflict  which 
carried  with  it  carnage  and  devastation  and  misery  enough  to 
satisfy  fully  the  appetite  for  military  "  glory  "  of  the  most 
ferocious,  the  most  ignorant,  or  the  most  foolhardy.  Not  the 
lines  of  marches  alone,  but  whole  provinces  were  ravaged 
indiscriminately  by  bands  of  marauders  of  both  the  contend- 
ing parties.  "  No  act  of  cruelty,"  say  the  deputies,  from 
Pomerania,  to  the  emperor,  "could  be  mentioned,  or  even 

15 


226     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


thought  of,  that  these  savages  had  not  exercised ;  and  many 
hundreds  of  the  wretched  inhabitants,  in  order  to  prevent 
these  horrible  acts  from  being  inflicted  upon  themselves,  and 
to  escape  from  dying  through  starvation,  had  committed 
suicide."  The  original  causes  of  the  war  were  soon  lost  sight 
of ;  and  no  man  knew  exactly  what  he  was  fighting  for. 
Scores  of  leaders  sprang  up,  made  names  for  themselves,  per- 
ished by  the  sword,  and  were  forgotten.  There  came  eventu- 
ally a  time  when  half  of  the  soldiers  in  the  armies  had  never 
lived  in  anything  but  a  state  of  warfare,  and  when  the  military 
occupation  wTas  the  only  one  that  many  men  could  turn  to  for 
their  support.  The  most  fortunate  of  the  inhabitants  were 
those  who  could  escape  from  their  country,  and  although  this 
was  not  an  easy  matter,  hosts  of  them  did  make  their  escape, 
mostly  into  the  Netherlands,  whence  many  sought  their  for- 
tunes in  the  Dutch  establishments  in  Asia  and  in  America. 

Burger  Jorissen's  home  —  the  town  of  Hirschberg  in  Sile- 
sia —  was  in  one  of  those  quiet  nooks  of  Germany  which  we 
are  least  likely  to  associate  with  war  and  bloodshed.  Sur- 
rounded by  gardens  and  by  meadows  and  pastures,  whitened 
here  and  there  by  the  linen  bleacheries  for  which  it  was 
famed,  the  town  lay  upon  a  mountain  stream  called  the  Bober 
River,  and  at  the  roots  of  the  Riesen  Gebirge,  the  Giants' 
Mountains  of  Bohemia,  about  which  Geibel  has  sung,  —  of 
the  sunshine  pouring  through  the  fir-trees,  the  deer  rustling 
in  the  thickets,  the  streamlets  tumbling  over  mossy  rocks : 

"  Wie  lieblich  fliesst  durch  griine  Tannen 
Auf  Bbhmens  Hoh'n  der  Sonne  Strahl ! 
Durch's  Dickicht  rauscht  das  Reh  von  dannen, 
Durch  Felsen  blinkt  der  Quell  ins  Thai, 
Und  fern  zu  blauen  Bergeswarten 
Verliert  sich  traumend  Aug'  und  Sinn." 

The  young  blacksmith,  Jorissen,  —  for  that  was  his  trade,  — 
had  attained  the  age  of  twenty  years,  when,  in  1632,  the  tide 
of  war  swept  over  Silesia,  it  having  been  overrun  in  that  year 
by  the  Swedes  and  Saxons,  after  the  great  victory  of  Gustavus 


BURGER  JORISSEN 


227 


Adolphus  at  Leipzic.  As  most  of  the  inhabitants  of  this 
part  of  Silesia  were  Lutherans,  however,  they  probably  suf- 
fered no  great  inconvenience  at  this  time,  but  in  the  following 
year,  after  the  death  of  Gustavus  Adolphus  at  Lutzen,  the 
Swedes  were  driven  out  by  a  division  of  Wallenstein's  army, 
and  the  Silesians  had  little  favor  to  expect  from  the  enraged 
Roman  Catholic  party  who  now  had  the  ascendancy.  It  is 
not  at  all  improbable  that  it  was  at  this  period  that  Burger 
Jorissen  quitted  his  native  country.  If  so,  nothing  would 
have  been  more  natural  at  this  time  than  that  he  should  have 
first  taken  refuge  in  Sweden,  and  this  may  account  for  the 
fact  that  as  soon  as  he  subsequently  became  settled  in  New 
Netherland,  he  married,  in  1639,  a  young  Swedish  woman, 
Engeltie  Mans. 

However  this  may  be,  Burger  Jorissen  found  his  way  to 
New  Netherland  in  1637,  in  which  year  he  came  to  Rensse- 
laerswyck,  now  Albany.  He  did  not  remain  there  long,  how- 
ever, for  in  1639,  the  year  of  his  marriage,  he  was  at  New 
Amsterdam,  at  which  time  he  was  so  well  thought  of  by 
Director-General  Kieft  that  he  granted  to  the  young  smith, 
for  four  years,  "  the  use  of  an  anvil  and  bellows,  with  half  of 
the  smith's  house."  It  has  been  already  stated1  that,  some- 
where about  1641,  Burger  Jorissen  built  the  house  upon 
Hoogh  S tract,  which  three  years  afterwards  he  sold  to  Cor- 
nells Melyn,  and  which  at  the  time  of  our  survey  was  in  the 
possession  of  the  poet,  Jacob  Steendam.  Burger  Jorissen 
was  evidently  a  thrifty  man,  and  was  soon  in  a  position  to  en- 
gage in  other  pursuits  than  those  of  his  handicraft.  At  an 
early  date,  he  was  the  owner  of  a  sloop  with  which  he  occa- 
sionally made  a  trading  voyage  up  the  Hudson  River ;  in  the 
capacity  of  a  trader,  however,  his  relations  with  the  colonial 
authorities  were  not  always  harmonious,  for  in  the  fall  of 
1643,  the  Council  placed  him  in  an  embarrassing  position  by 
forbidding  him  either  to  depart  or  to  come  ashore  from  his 
vessel,  "  till  he  has  rendered  a  correct  account  and  paid  the 
duties."    It  may  have  been  the  possession  of  this  vessel,  with 

1  See  ante,  pages  104,  128. 


228     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


its  facilities  for  easy  transportation,  that  induced  Jorissen, 
before  1642,  to  begin  the  clearing  of  a  plantation  for  himself, 
in  a  remote  part  of  what  was  afterwards  the  town  of  Newtown 
upon  Long  Island,  but  which  was  at  this  time,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  two  or  three  widely  scattered  plantations,  an  unbroken 
wilderness. 

Nearly  a  mile  up  the  Mespat  Kill  of  the  Dutch,  —  the 
present  Newtown  Creek,  —  there  comes  in  from  the  north 
through  the  salt  meadows  a  tributary  creek  of  considerable 
size,  known  to  the  Indians  as  Canapaukah,  and  this  in  earlier 
days  was  navigable  for  vessels  of  light  draft  for  about  a  mile 
towards  its  head,  and  to  a  spot  where  it  approached  very  near 
the  upland.  This  was  the  place,  in  an  amphitheatre  of  low 
hills,  or  rather  knolls,  looking  towards  the  south,  that  Burger 
Jorissen  selected  for  his  plantation.  In  1643,  he  received  a 
grant  of  the  land,  some  fifty-eight  or  sixty  acres,  from  the  Dutch 
government.  The  locality  was  known,  until  recent  years,  by 
the  name  of  "  The  Dutch  Kills ;  "  and  the  site  of  Burger  Joris- 
sen's  house  is  occupied,  there  is  little  room  to  doubt,  by  an 
ancient  farmhouse  of  the  eighteenth  century,  which  may  be 
seen  upon  the  left-hand  side,  or  north,  of  the  Long  Island 
railway,  a  half-mile  or  so  beyond  the  Queens  County  Court 
House  at  Long  Island  City.  The  small  morass  below  it  is  the 
remains  of  the  mill-pond  established  here  some  years  later  by 
Burger  Jorissen.  In  addition  to  this  plantation,  Jorissen 
seems  to  have  made  use  for  a  time  —  no  doubt  by  the  per- 
mission of  the  Director  and  Council  —  of  the  island  known 
afterwards  as  Luyster's  Island,  lying  close  to  the  Long  Island 
shore,  beyond  Hell  Gate,  and  a  short  distance  west  of  the 
resort  now  known  as  North  Beach.  This  island,  as  being  a 
place  of  security,  appears  to  have  been  used  by  him  for  the 
purpose  of  herding  swine  upon  it,  they  being  easily  conveyed 
to  and  from  it  by  his  vessel,  and  being  there  comparatively 
free  from  danger  of  the  attacks  of  wolves. 

Burger  Jorissen  does  not  appear  to  have  originally  intended 
his  Long  Island  bouwery  for  his  own  residence.  It  was  leased 
out,  as  early  as  1642,  and  when  he  sold  his  house  upon  Hoogh 


JANSEN  AND  DIRECTOR  KIEFT 


229 


Straet  to  Cornelis  Melyn,  in  1644,  he  immediately  took  posses- 
sion of  another  residence  upon  the  same  street,  the  house  near 
the  present  Hanover  Square,  of  which  we  have  spoken  above, 
and  winch  he  purchased  in  the  last-mentioned  year  from  Hen- 
drick  Jansen,  the  tailor ;  this  latter  personage  —  characterized 
by  a  singularly  virulent  animosity  against  Director-General 
Kieft,  which  he  displayed  all  through  that  officer's  administra- 
tion, and  which  nothing  could  restrain  —  deserves  some  par- 
ticular mention.  As  early  as  1639,  Hendrick  Jansen  is  found 
occupying  a  small  parcel  of  land  at  the  southwest  angle  of 
the  river  road  and  Maagde  Paetje,  or  the  modern  Pearl  Street 
and  Maiden  Lane,  he  being  one  of  the  very  first  settlers  along 
the  East  River  shore.  Selling  this  property  in  the  latter  part 
of  1641,  he  appears  to  have  soon  acquired  the  land  and  built 
the  house  near  the  present  Hanover  Square  which  he  after- 
wards sold  to  Burger  Jorissen,  though  he  did  not  get  his  for- 
mal deed  for  it  until  1644,  —  very  possibly  on  account  of  his 
difficulties  with  Director  Kieft.  Jansen's  animosity  to  the 
Director-General,  from  whatever  cause  it  originated,  began 
early.  On  the  27th  of  May,  1638,  within  a  month  or  two  of 
the  beginning  of  Kieft's  administration,  Jansen  was  prosecuted 
by  the  fiscal  for  slander:  upon  this  occasion,  we  find  that 
Hendrick  displayed  a  sagacity  which  cannot  fail  to  excite  our 
admiration,  for  his  defence  was  that  he  uttered  the  slander 
when  asleep.  He  had  to  do,  however,  with  an  adversary  who 
was  little  less  astute  than  himself,  and  at  the  instance  of  the 
fiscal,  the  Council  made  an  order  "  that  the  defendant  produce 
proper  affidavit  that  he  was  asleep  w^hen  the  slander  was  ex- 
pressed." This  proceeding,  with  its  distinct  flavor  of  modern 
comic  opera,  does  not  appear  to  have  resulted  in  anything  very 
serious,  but  in  1642,  at  a  gathering  at  Burger  Jorissen's  house, 
at  which  Jansen  was  present,  "  very  drunk,"  as  the  witnesses 
say,  he  was  much  more  violent  in  his  language,  complaining 
of  Kieft  as  being  hostile  to  him,  and  refusing  him  any  credit. 
"If  I  could  cringe  and  fawn  like  Frenchmen  and  English- 
men," he  said,  "  I  too  could  get  credit.  In  short,  an  effort  is 
being  made  to  crush  the  Netherlander,  and  foreigners  are  en- 


230     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


couraged,"  then,  snapping  his  fingers,  "  I  don't  care  a  fig  for 
it!  What  does  the  villain  mean?  "  Then  followed,  according 
to  the  witnesses,  a  highly  uncomplimentary  and  also  unprint- 
able reflection  upon  the  Director- General.  This  affair  found 
its  way  to  the  ears  of  Kieft  and  the  Council,  and  Hendrick 
Jansen  was  promptly  ordered  to  be  put  in  irons ;  he  was  kept 
in  imprisonment  for  a  month,  and  was  then  sentenced  to  ban- 
ishment, but  for  some  reason  this  was  not  carried  out.  Jan- 
sen was  still  in  the  country  at  the  time  of  the  Indian  massacre 
in  the  beginning  of  the  next  year ;  and  at  a  period  when  all 
tongues  were  employed  in  denouncing  Kieft,  we  may  be  sure 
that  Hendrick  Jansen's  was  not  silent.  In  June,  1643,  he 
was  ordered  by  the  Council  to  "  get  ready  to  depart  on  the 
'  Prince  Maurice,'  which  lies  ready  to  sail,"  but  he  found  means 
of  evading  this  command.  On  the  29th  of  September,  1644, 
he  was  again  before  the  Council,  and  was  sentenced  to  a  fine 
of  500  guilders  for  slandering  the  Director-General,  for  which 
amount  his  son-in-law,  Gillis  Pietersen,  gave  his  promissory 
note.1  It  was  perhaps  in  preparation  for  this  outcome  that  thir- 
teen days  before,  or  on  the  16th  of  September,  1644,  Jansen 
had  transferred  to  Burger  Jorissen  his  "  house,  garden,  and 
brew-house  "  for  the  sum  of  1900  guilders,  or  about  $720  of  the 
present  currency;  and  these  premises  became  the  abode  of 
Jorissen  during  the  remainder  of  his  residence  in  New  Amster- 
dam. As  for  Hendrick  Jansen,  he  remained  in  the  colony  till 
the  summer  of  1647,  when  he  prepared  to  return  with  Kieft 
to  the  Netherlands,  designing,  perhaps  (as  there  is  little  doubt 
that  several  others  of  Kieft's  enemies  did),  to  call  the  ex- 
director  to  account  in  the  Fatherland  for  his  arbitrary  pro- 
ceedings. Jansen  seems  to  have  been  well  thought  of  by  his 
neighbors,  and  carried  with  him  several  letters  of  procuration 
to  attend  to  various  business  for  them  in  the  Netherlands. 
He  sailed  in  the  "  Princess,"  and  is  supposed  to  have  been  one 
of  those  who  perished  in  the  wreck  of  that  ill-fated  vessel. 
Burger's  "  smithy,"  which  he  soon  built  near  his  new  house 

1  This  may  possibly  have  been  a  compromise  of  the  sentence  of  two  years 
before,  but  it  has  the  appearance  of  having  been  a  new  prosecution. 


BURGER'S  "SMITHY "  AND  BREW-HOUSE  231 


upon  Hoogh  Straet,  became  a  well-known  point,  as  Burger 
himself  came  to  be  a  well-marked  character  in  the  town.  The 
circumstances  of  his  life  had.  contributed  to  give  him  a  some- 
what rough  exterior,  but  he  seems  to  have  been  good-hearted 
and  generally  liked.  The  small  "  brew-house  "  which  he  had 
received  from  Hendrick  Jansen,  and  the  acquaintance  with 
the  brewer's  processes,  which  he  as  well  as  many  other  men  of 
his  day  possessed,  was  not  an  unmixed  good  to  him.  In  1646, 
he  was  prosecuted  and  fined  for  selling  beer  without  paying 
the  excise  tax.  He  denied  the  general  charge,  but  admitted 
that  three  half-barrels  were  drunk  in  his  house  "  with  some 
company."  Somewhat  sore  over  this  affair,  Burger  threatened 
the  fiscal,  or  prosecuting  officer,  that  he  would  "  cut  a  slice  " 
out  of  that  official's  body,  before  he  got  away  from  the  country. 
The  aggrieved  fiscal  immediately  instituted  a  prosecution  of 
his  own  against  Burger  for  these  injurious  words,  whereupon 
the  latter  appeared  before  the  Council  and  begged  pardon  of 
the  officer.  The  fiscal  was  obdurate,  however,  and  insisted 
that  Burger  should  be  fined :  the  matter  was  referred  to  cer- 
tain arbitrators,  who  reported  to  the  Council  that  they  had 
met,  but  that  Burger  "  made  game  of  them."  The  Council 
itself  now  took  the  affair  in  hand  and  not  only  fined  Burger 
60  guilders,  but  upon  his  addressing  that  body  in  a  manner 
which  it  considered  derogatory  to  its  dignity,  it  ordered  him 
"to  remain  four  and  twenty  hours  in  chains." 

Nearly  ten  years  later,  Burger  retained  some  of  his  old 
characteristics,  for  in  1655  he  was  prosecuted  for  assaulting, 
in  his  own  house,  when  drunk,  Joshua  Atwater  of  Stratford, 
Connecticut,  in  a  dispute  about  an  account ;  this  proceeding 
also  Burger  regarded  as  highly  unjust  to  himself,  since  his 
witnesses  showed  that  he  had  paid  the  difference  in  dispute, 
confessed  his  fault,  "  and  separated  with  a  drink  in  friendship 
and  harmony." 

Burger  Jorissen  continued  his  active  life  at  New  Amster- 
dam and  its  vicinity  for  many  years.  Before  1654,  he  had 
thrown  a  dam  across  the  Canapaukah  Creek  near  his  bouwery 
upon  Long  Island,  and  established  a  mill  there,  which  was 


232     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


famous  long  after  his  day  under  the  appellation  of  "  Burger's 
Mill."  This  mill  was  in  existence  less  than  a  century  ago, 
and  the  mill-dam  remained  till  about  1861,  when  it  is  said  to 
have  been  demolished  by  the  building  of  the  Long  Island 
railway  over  its  site.  Jorissen  became  a  noted  character  in 
the  locality  of  his  bouwery ;  the  creek  up  which  his  boat  used 
to  sail  to  the  foot  of  the  mill-dam  is  still  occasionally  known 
as  "Burger's  Kill;"  and  a  small  run  of  water  which  he 
widened  and  deepened  through  the  swampy  land  lying  east 
of  the  mill-pond,  to  increase  the  water  supply  for  his  mill, 
was  long  known  as  "  Burger's  Sluice."  This  until  within  a 
comparatively  few  years  presented  itself  as  a  veritable  artist's 
study,  with  its  banks  lined  with  alders  and  overarched  by 
swamp  maples  and  white  woods,  with  their  swinging  vines  of 
the  wild  grape.    It  is  now  merely  a  bare  and  half  dry  ditch. 

About  the  year  1654,  the  opening  of  several  additional 
streets  in  New  Amsterdam  was  planned,  one  of  which,  it  was 
pretty  well  decided,  was  to  pass  through  Burger  Jorissen's 
garden ;  he  therefore  determined  to  sell  the  house  in  which 
he  had  now  resided  for  about  ten  years,  and  to  build  a  new 
house  for  himself  upon  the  east  side  of  his  land.  The  old 
house,  with  a  long  narrow  strip  of  land  extending  back  about 
to  the  present  Beaver  Street,  was  sold  in  the  summer  of  1655 
to  one  Marcus  Hendricksen  Vogelsang,  who,  however,  only 
kept  it  till  the  next  year,  when  it  came  into  the  possession  of 
Michiel  Jansen,  a  farmer  whose  plantation  at  Gamoenepa,  or 
Communipaw,  had  recently  been  devastated  by  the  Indians, 
at  which  time,  as  he  states  in  a  petition  to  the  Director  and 
Council,  "  he  lost  all  he  had  acquired  for  seventeen  years,  and 
was  left  without  means  whatever  to  support  himself  and  six 
children."1  Jansen  lived  here  a  short  time,  but  afterwards 
returned  to  his  bouwery  at  Gamoenepa. 

1  This  Michiel  Jansen,  from  Broeckhuysen,  came  over  from  tne  Nether- 
lands, in  1636.  According  to  the  railing  catalogue  of  Secretary  van  Tienhoven, 
he  had  been  a  "  boere  knecht,"  or  farm  laborer.  He  first  went  to  Rensselaers- 
wyck  with  his  wife  and  two  children.  Here  he  prospered ;  but  on  account  of 
some  disagreement  with  the  leaders  of  that  colony,  he  left  and  came  to  New 
Amsterdam.    For  a  while  he  farmed  several  parcels  of  land  upon  Manhattan 


SMITH'S  STREET 


233 


By  the  end  of  1656,  the  new  street  had  been  laid  out:  it 
seems  to  have  received  its  name  of  Smith's  Street  from  the 
blacksmith  whose  land  it  ran  through ; 1  and  it  continued  to 
be  known  by  that  name  until  far  into  the  next  century, 
when  the  name  of  King  William,  which  had  been  given  to  an 
extension  of  this  street,  was  gradually  applied  to  the  whole, 
which  came  to  be  thus  known  as  William  Street.  About 
1660,  Burger  Jorissen  sold  off  in  small  parcels  all  of  his  land 
remaining  upon  the  west  side  of  William  Street.  His  later 
house,  the  site  of  which  is  covered  by  the  New  Cotton 
Exchange,  was  at  the  eastern  corner  of  William  and  Stone 
streets,  and  here  he  resided  during  the  remainder  of  his  stay 
in  New  Amsterdam.2  He  left  the  town,  however,  soon  after 
the  surrender  to  the  English  in  1664,  and  took  up  his  resi- 
dence upon  his  Long  Island  bouwery,  selling  his  house  in 
New  Amsterdam  to  Thomas  Lewis,  in  the  year  1668.  Dur- 
ing the  short  remainder  of  his  life  upon  Long  Island,  he 

Island,  but  eventually  bought  the  farm  of  Jan  Evertsen  Bout,  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  North  River,  paying  for  it  8000  guilders,  or  about  $3200  of  the  pres- 
ent currency.  He  appears  to  have  died  at  his  plantation  in  Communipaw  some 
time  prior  to  the  autumn  of  1663. 

1  This  appears  to  be  a  much  more  satisfactory  explanation  of  the  name  of  the 
street  than  that  it  received  its  designation  from  Jan  Smedes,  the  glass-maker  who 
lived  towards  the  termination  of  the  Slyck  Steegli  near  where  the  new  street  was 
laid  out.  He  had  not  been  a  man  of  much  prominence  in  the  town,  and  had 
nothing  in  particular  to  do  with  the  laying  out  of  the  street,  so  far  as  can  be  dis- 
covered. A  petition  which  was  made  to  the  burgomasters  on  the  19th  of  April, 
1657,  by  "  the  neighbors  in  the  Glazier  Street,"  for  "  a  cartway  to  the  Strand,  as 
was  promised  them,"  has  been  taken  to  refer  to  the  newly  opened  street,  and 
consequently  as  supporting  the  notion  that  the  name  was  derived  from  Jan 
Smedes.  As,  however,  not  only  this  individual,  but  also  the  other  principal  glass- 
maker  of  the  town,  Evert  Duyckingh,  resided  in  the  Slyck  Steegh,  it  is  much 
more  likely  that  this  is  the  "  Glazier  Street "  referred  to,  and  that  the  petition  is 
either  a  protest  against  the  closing  of  the  easterly  portion  of  the  Slyck  Steegh 
(which  was  afterwards  carried  out),  or  else  that  it  related  to  the  passageway 
into  Hoogh  Straet,  which  still  exists  under  the  name  of  Mill  Street  or  Lane,  and 
the  lane  or  passageway  nearly  opposite,  which  is  now  closed,  but  which  then  led 
from  Hoogh  Straet  down  to  the  shore  of  the  river. 

2  In  the  early  portion  of  the  eighteenth  century,  this  house  became  of  interest 
as  being  the  residence  and  place  of  business  of  William  Bradford,  the  first  estab- 
lished printer  in  New  York;  here,  in  1725,  is  supposed  to  have  been  issued  the 
first  number  of  the  "  New  York  Gazette,"  the  pioneer  newspaper  of  the  city. 


234     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 

became  a  man  of  considerable  prominence,  and  was  one  of 
the  patentees  named  in  the  Nicoll  Patent  of  the  town  of 
Newtown  in  1666-67,  and  one  of  several  commissioners 
appointed  in  1670  to  lay  out  and  regulate  roads  in  that  town. 
He  died  in  1671  at  his  farm  at  "  The  Dutch  Kills,"  leaving  a 
family  of  several  adult  sons.  His  widow,  Engeltie,  however, 
— apparently  desirous  of  returning  to  the  scenes  of  her  earlier 
life,  —  purchased,  some  time  before  1683,  the  old  house  of 
Richard  Smith,  upon  Hoogh  Straet,  of  which  prior  mention 
has  been  made.1  Here  she  resided  for  many  years,  with  her 
sons  Hermanus  and  Johannes  Burger,  —  for  Burger  hence- 
forth became  the  family  name :  all  three  of  them  appear  as 
members  of  the  Dutch  church,  in  the  list  of  1686.  Engeltie 
appears  to  have  been  a  vigorous  old  lady  of  somewhat  mas- 
culine disposition.  She  was  frequently,  as  witness  or  liti- 
gant, before  the  court  at  the  Stadt  Huys,  where  she  was  much 
dreaded  on  account  of  her  loquacity,  the  magistrates  being 
forced  to  protest  against  her  upon  their  minutes,  as  being 
addicted  to  "an  outpouring  of  many  words."  She  attained 
a  great  age,  but,  as  she  states,  in  an  affidavit  which  she  made 
in  the  year  1701  before  the  Mayor,  that  she  is  "  aged  seventy 
years,  or  thereabouts,"  —  which  would  have  made  her  about 
eight  years  of  age  at  the  time  of  her  marriage  to  Burger 
Jorissen,  in  1639, — the  inference  may  perhaps  arise  that  her 
memory  in  her  later  years  was  not  as  good  as  it  had  formerly 
been. 

1  See  ante,  pages  220,  221. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 


GOVERT  LOOCKERMANS  AND  HIS  FAMILY.  -  ELSIE  LE1SLER. 

-  THE  LOO CKERMA NS'  HOUSE  AND  ITS  ASSOCIATIONS. 

—  CAPTAIN  KIDD 

1  Le  temps  emporte  sur  son  aile 
Et  le  priutemps  et  l'hirondelle, 
Et  la  vie  et  les  jours  perdus  : 
Tout  s'en  va  coramc  la  fumee, 
L  'esperance  et  la  renomme'e !  " 

A.  DE  MUSSET. 

IF  any  person  endowed  with  the  gift  of  an  insight  into  the 
future  had  predicted  to  Govert  Loockermans,  the  young 
assistant  of  the  cook  on  the  yacht  "  St.  Martin,"  upon  his 
arrival  in  New  Amsterdam,  in  the  year  1633,  that  he  was  to 
become  the  leading  merchant  of  his  day  in  a  town  which  two 
centuries  and  a  half  later  was  to  occupy  the  position  of  the 
second  city  of  the  world ;  that  in  the  next  generation  his  son 
should  be  a  magistrate  and  physician  of  note  in  a  then  flour- 
ishing but  as  yet  non-existent  community,  two  hundred 
miles  away  from  New  Amsterdam  through  trackless  forests ; 
that  his  step-daughter's  husband  should  take  entire  possession 
of  the  government  of  the  New  Netherland  Colony,  claiming 
to  hold  the  same  for  the  King  of  England,  which  king  should 
at  the  same  time  be  the  Stadtholder  of  the  United  Nether- 
lands and  the  head  of  the  historic  Nassau-Orange  family; 
that  this  same  husband  of  his  step-daughter,  together  with 
her  daughter's  husband,  should  suffer  the  penalty  of  death 
for  treason  in  a  prosecution  principally  urged  by  the  members 
of  a  family  into  which  his  (Loockermans)  own  daughter 
should  have  married ;  that  the  house  which  he  should  build 


236     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


for  his  residence  in  New  Amsterdam  should  after  his  death 
be  the  home  of  a  man  who  (whether  justly  or  unjustly) 
should  suffer  as  the  most  notorious  pirate  of  his  age,  but 
that  this  same  man  should  represent  an  association  of  which 
no  less  a  personage  than  the  aforesaid  King  of  England  was 
one  of  the  parties,  —  if  all  this  had  been  told  to  Go  vert 
Loockermans,  he  would  probably  have  regarded  it  as  the 
ravings  of  delirium. 

The  original  home  of  Govert  Loockermans  was  at  Turnhout, 
a  town  about  twenty-five  miles  northeast  of  Antwerp,  and 
not  within  the  L^nited  Provinces,  but  in  that  portion  of  the 
Netherlands  which  remained  under  the  Spanish  and  afterwards 
under  the  Austrian  rule.  Coming  to  New  Netherland  in  1633 
in  a  humble  capacity,  as  already  mentioned,1  he  acquired  the 
favorable  opinion  of  Director-General  Van  Twiller,  who  pro- 
cured him  a  situation  as  clerk  in  the  employ  of  the  West 
India  Company :  how  long  he  remained  in  the  service  of  the 
company  we  do  not  know,  but  he  is  said  to  have  been  one 
of  the  party  sent  out  by  Director-General  Kieft,  in  1640, 
under  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven,  against  the  Raritan  Indians, 
—  upon  which  occasion,  says  Clute,  in  his  "  Annals  of  Staten 
Island,"  he  distinguished  himself  by  killing  one  of  the  natives 
in  cold  blood. 

This  story,  however,  may  be  a  mere  invention  of  Loocker- 
mans' enemies,  for  it  is  known  that  a  little  later  he  was  ac- 
cused of  undue  partiality  towards  the  Indians,  with  whom, 
as  a  fur  trader,  he  must  necessarily  have  had  to  keep  on 
good  terms.  In  1648,  one  Govert  Aertsen,  owner  of  a  sloop 
making  occasional  voyages  to  New  England,  made  the  extraor- 
dinary application,  to  the  Council  at  New  Amsterdam,  for 
a  formal  certificate  that  his  name  was  not  Govert  Loocker- 
mans. It  appeared  that  he  had  recently  been  with  his  sloop 
at  Rhode  Island,  and  there  some  of  the  inhabitants  became  con- 
vinced that  he  was  Govert  Loockermans,  against  whom  they 
were  at  that  time  highly  incensed  for  having  sold  powder  and 

1  It  is  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven  who,  in  his  sneering  way  of  speaking  of  the 
principal  men  of  New  Amsterdam,  calls  him  "a  cook's  mate  turned  trader." 


GOVERT  LOOCKERMANS 


237 


lead  to  the  New  England  Indians.  Despite  his  protestations, 
Aertsen  came  very  near  being  thrown  into  prison  there,  a 
clamor  having  been  made  for  the  confiscation  of  the  vessel.  It 
is  this  incident,  in  part,  that  leads  to  the  conjecture  that  Go  vert 
Loockermans'  patronymic  was  really  Aertsen,  or  Aersen, 
though  (as  in  many  other  instances)  the  patronymic  was 
not  generally  used  by  him.  The  term  "  Loockerman  "  is  so 
clearly  suggestive  of  the  ship's  locker  that  that  designation 
would  seem  to  have  been  originally  applied  to  him  from  his 
early  avocation,  and  to  have  been  in  the  end  accepted  by  him 
for  convenience'  sake.  This  conjecture  certainly  tends  to 
explain  (as  will  be  afterwards  mentioned)  what  is  otherwise 
a  matter  of  considerable  uncertainty ;  namely,  the  manner 
in  which  Loockermans  acquired  the  plot  upon  which  he 
resided,  at  the  present  Hanover  Square. 

About  the  latter  part  of  1640,  Go  vert  Loockermans  re- 
visited the  Netherlands,  where  he  remained  some  months, 
and  where,  at  Amsterdam,  in  the  early  part  of  the  year  1041, 
he  married  Ariaentje  Janse.  A  short  time  later,  accompanied 
by  his  wife,  he  sailed  for  New  Amsterdam  in  the  ship  "  King 
David,"  having  under  his  charge,  as  agent  for  the  firm  of 
Gillis  Verbrugge  and  Company,  a  cargo  of  goods  for  New 
Netherland.  With  him  came,  in  all  probability,  his  sister 
Anneken,  who,  in  the  early  part  of  1G42,  was  married  at  New 
Amsterdam  to  Oloff  Stevensen  van  Cortlandt,  of  whom 
mention  has  already  been  made.1 

Govert  Loockermans  now  soon  became  engaged  in  import- 
ant trading  operations  upon  his  own  account.  In  1642,  he 
bought,  in  conjunction  with  one  Cornells  Leendertsen,  from 
Isaac  Allerton,  the  leading  New  England  trader,  for  the 
sum  of  1100  guilders,  the  bark  called  the  "  Hope ; "  and 
from  this  time,  for  a  long  period,  he  was  closely  connected 
in  business  enterprises  with  Allerton.    The  two  acquired 

1  See  ante,  page  7G.  This  lady,  the  ancestress  of  the  American  family  of  Van 
Cortlandt,  lived  long  in  high  esteem  at  New  Amsterdam.  She  survived  her 
husband,  and  the  poetical  epitaph  composed,  upon  her  own  death,  by  her  pastor, 
the  Reverend  Ilenricus  Selyns,  is  still  extant. 


238     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


jointly,  in  1643,  a  parcel  of  ground  upon  the  east  side  of  the 
present  Broadway,  about  two  hundred  and  seventy-five  feet 
north  of  Beaver  Street,  —  a  large  plot,  of  about  one  hundred 
feet  front,  and  extending  some  two  hundred  and  fifty  feet 
down  the  hill  towards  the  Broad  Street  swamp.  What  this 
property  was  used  or  designed  for,  whether  for  warehouse 
purposes  or  for  speculation,  or  whether  it  was  held  to  cover 
some  indebtedness  to  these  associates,  does  not  appear.  It  is 
a  curious  fact  that  although  Govert  Loockermans  was  for 
many  years  engaged  in  mercantile  ventures,  we  nowhere 
meet  with  any  allusions  to  a  warehouse  owned  by  him; 
this  may,  indeed,  have  been  located  at  his  residence  near  the 
East  River  shore,  the  large  size  of  the  building  rendering  this 
quite  probable,  or  it  is  possible  that  he  may  have  made  use 
of  Allerton's  large  building  at  the  present  Pearl  Street  and 
Peck  Slip. 

Loockermans  was  a  bold  and  enterprising  trader,  careless 
of  whose  corns  he  trod  upon,  —  metaphorically  speaking,  — 
in  his  pursuit  of  gain:  ready,  apparently,  at  any  time  to 
furnish  the  Indians  with  firearms,  powder,  and  balls,  in  ex- 
change for  their  furs ;  and  declining  to  permit  any  inter- 
ference in  his  business  by  persons  of  adverse  interest.  In 
1644,  he  had  been  up  the  Hudson,  upon  a  trading  voyage 
to  the  north,  in  the  yacht,  the  "  Good  Hope,"  and  on  his 
return,  when  passing  Bear's  Island,  below  Albany,  where  the 
patroon  Van  Rensselaer  had  erected  a  small  fortification  which 
was  guarded  by  one  Nicholas  Koorn,  that  individual,  accord- 
ing to  the  story  of  several  of  the  men  of  Loockermans'  crew, 
"  cried  out  to  Govert  Loockermans,  when  we  were  passing  by : 
4  Lower  thy  colors.'  *  For  whom  should  I  do  so  ?  '  retorted 
Loockermans.  Then  Koorn  replied :  4  For  the  staple  right  of 
Rensselaerswyck.'  Then  Govert  Loockermans  answered,  *I 
lower  not  the  colors  for  any  individual  except  for  the  Prince 
of  Orange  and  the  lords,  my  masters ; '  —  when  directly 
Nicholas  Koorn  fired  a  gun.  The  first  shot  went  through 
the  sail,  broke  the  ropes  and  the  ladder ;  a  second  discharge 
passed  over  us;  and  the  third,  done  by  a  savage,  perforated 


LOOCKERMANS'  VOYAGES  239 


our  princely  colors  about  a  foot  above  the  head  of  Loocker- 
mans,  who  kept  constantly  the  colors  in  his  hand;  but  we 
continued  our  course,  notwithstanding  this  insulting  assault, 
without  returning  the  fire,  or  making  any  other  reprisals 
whatever,  and  descended  gently  the  river."  Other  witnesses, 
however,  testified  that  Govert's  demeanor  was  not  quite  so 
lamb-like,  but  that  he  cried  out  to  Koorn  and  his  men: 
"  Fire,  ye  dogs ;  and  the  devil  take  you !  " 

Loockermans'  voyages  extended  all  along  the  coast,  from 
New  England  to  Virginia,  and  at  several  places  he  acquired, 
at  different  times,  large  tracts  of  wild  lands,  as,  for  example, 
in  Maryland,  and  at  various  points  upon  Long  Island.  On 
Manhattan  Island  he  held  also  a  number  of  parcels  of  ground, 
—  notably,  almost  all  the  land  lying  between  the  present 
Ann  Street  and  the  Versche  Water,  or  Fresh  Water,  —  the 
little  run  of  water  forming  one  of  the  outlets  of  the  Kolck 
pond,  and  emptying  into  the  East  River  near  the  present 
James  Street.  Most  of  Loockermans'  transactions  in  New 
Amsterdam  real  estate  are  very  difficult  to  trace,  however, 
from  a  peculiarity  he  seems  to  have  had  of  avoiding,  as  far 
as  possible,  the  registry  of  his  "  ground-briefs,"  and  much  is 
discoverable  only  through  allusions  and  recitals  in  other 
documents. 

For  this  reason,  we  cannot  tell  exactly  when  Loockermans 
acquired  the  large  parcel  of  ground  upon  the  present  Hanover 
Square,  where  he  resided  for  a  great  part  of  his  life.  It,  or 
a  portion  of  it,  is  recited  to  have  been  granted  by  the  Dutch 
government  in  1643,  but  whether  to  Loockermans  or  to 
some  other  person  does  not  appear.  There  is  evidence,  how- 
ever, that  the  westerly  portion  of  the  land,  embracing  about 
one  hundred  and  fifteen  feet  in  frontage,  and  extending  along 
Hanover  Square  nearly  to  the  easterly  line  of  the  present 
Coffee  Exchange,  was  originally  granted  either  to  Cornells 
Leendertsen,  Loockermans'  business  associate  (who  died  prior 
to  1646),  or  to  Dirck  Cornelissen,  who  appears  to  have  been 
his  son.  The  latter  married,  in  1646,  Marritje  Janse,  widow 
of  the  ship-carpenter,  Tymen  Jansen,  but  died  within  two 


240     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


or  three  years ;  his  widow  marrying  Govert  Loockermans  in 
1649,  this  property  passed  to  the  latter,  in  right  of  his  wife. 
Dirck  Cornelissen's  house,  which  appears  to  have  stood 
about  on  the  western  end  of  the  present  Coffee  Exchange, 
was  sold  in  1667  or  1668  to  Reynhout  Reynhoutsen  by 
Loockermans. 

As  to  the  easterly  portion  of  Loockermans'  land,  which 
covered  originally  about  one  hundred  and  thirty  feet  front, 
unless  he  is  the  person  (as  it  seems  quite  probable  that  he 
is)  referred  to  as  Govert  Aertsen  in  a  deed  of  1645  from 
Dirck  Volckertsen,  we  have  no  information  as  to  how  he 
acquired  the  land.  The  description  given  in  that  deed  is  as 
follows :  "  A  house  and  lot,  where  Dirck  Cornelissen  next 
adjoins  on  the  west  side,  and  Jan  Damen,"  —  the  so-called 
outhoek,  —  "  on  the  east."  No  disposition  of  this  parcel  by 
Govert  Aertsen  can  be  found,  and  within  two  or  three  years 
from  the  last-mentioned  date  Loockermans  is  known  to  have 
been  in  possession  of  it. 

In  whatever  manner  he  had  acquired  it,  however,  we  find 
Govert  Loockermans,  as  early  as  1649,  in  possession  of  this 
large  parcel  of  ground,  —  nearly  three  hundred  feet  in  front- 
age along  the  River  Road,  and  part  of  it  extending  back 
nearly  or  quite  to  the  present  Wall  Street.  Here  he  seems 
to  have  at  first  established  his  residence  in  a  house  afterwards 
occupied  by  Daniel  Litscho  and  subsequently  by  Andries 
Jochemsen  as  a  tavern,  the  site  of  which  is  at  present  covered 
by  No.  125  Pearl  Street;  but  in  a  few  years  he  had  built 
a  new  residence  for  himself  on  a  portion  of  his  ground  a 
little  farther  west  along  the  road.  This  latter  building  ap- 
pears to  have  been  a  substantial  edifice,  of  some  size  and 
pretensions,  and  is  quite  clearly  shown  upon  the  "  Duke's 
Plan,"  supposed  to  represent  the  town  as  of  the  year  1661. 
As  early  as  1654  it  was  enclosed  with  a  high  wall,  provided 
with  a  gate  kept  locked  and  barred  by  night :  these  particu- 
lars we  learn  from  the  prosecution  of  one  Willemsen  for 
burglary  at  this  house  in  that  year,  as  it  was  thought  that 
he  must  have  had  confederates  to  help  him  climb  the  wall. 


ft.) 


Plan  of  New  Amsterdam 


from  the  Stadt  Huys  to  the  Town 
Palisades  A.D.  1655 
Compiled  from  the  Dutch  and 
English  Records  by 


THE  LOOCKERMANS  HOUSE 


241 


It  is  the  fact  that  Loockermans'  house  was  thus  protected, 
that  leads  to  the  conjecture  that  a  portion  of  it  may  have 
been  used  as  his  warehouse.  The  site  of  this  house  is  now 
occupied  by  the  two  unpretending  buildings  extending  from 
the  Coffee  Exchange  to  the  corner  of  the  modern  Hanover 
Street,  and  numbered  119  and  121  Pearl  Street. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  this  was  the  same  building 
shown  as  occupying  this  spot  in  a  plan  made  in  the  year 
1719.  This  building  was,  as  has  been  said,  of  large,  and,  in 
fact,  of  unusually  large,  dimensions.  It  was  of  about  thirty- 
eight  feet  in  front  by  forty-eight  feet  in  depth ;  and  a  kitchen 
extension  of  about  twenty  feet  square  upon  its  east  side 
gives  suggestions  of  quarters  for  the  domestic  slaves,1  as 
the  size  of  the  main  building  does  of  its  partial  use  for 
warehouse  purposes.  Along  the  east  side  of  the  building 
ran,  in  the  year  last  above  mentioned,  a  narrow  cartway,  now 
forming  a  part  of  what  is  known  as  Hanover  Street ;  and 
nearly  a  hundred  feet  in  the  rear  of  the  house,  upon  the 
back  lane  called  "the  Sloot,"  or  ditch,  stood  a  capacious 
stable,  or  coach-house,  some  twenty  by  forty  feet  in  size. 
It  is  quite  likely,  however,  that  this  last  structure  was  built 
after  Loockermans'  time. 

Govert  Loockermans'  first  wife  had  died  before  1649,  leav- 
ing him  with  two  little  daughters,  Marritje  and  Jannetje, 
who  were  respectively  about  eight  and  six  years  of  age  at 
the  period  mentioned.  Upon  the  20th  of  July  of  that  year 
he  married,  for  his  second  wife,  the  widow,  Marritje  Janse. 
This  lady  had  been  the  wife  of  Tymen  Jansen,  a  ship  car- 
penter in  the  employ  of  the  West  India  Company,  to  whose 
house  upon  the  present  Pearl  Street  just  north  of  Wall,  we 
shall  have  occasion  to  allude  hereafter.  Tymen  Jansen  had 
been  for  several  years  from  1633  the  principal  shipwright 

1  In  her  will,  made  in  1677,  Loockermans' widow  Marritje  provides  for  two  of 
the  slave  "  boys,"  Manuel  and  Francis.  The  former  was  to  be  freed  at  the  age 
of  twenty-five  :  as  to  the  latter,  she  requires  that  her  children  "  shall  maintain 
him  with  dyett  and  clothing,  and  good  discipline  ;  not  willing,  neither  desiring 
that  they  should  sell  him  alien  and  transport,  neither  to  deliver  him  to  the 
service  of  a  stranger."    Lib.  1,  Wills,  N.  Y.  Surr.  Office. 

16 


242     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


of  the  Company,  at  New  Amsterdam,  and  had  constructed 
many  vessels  here :  he  had  died  some  years  before  1649, 
however,  leaving  his  widow  with  a  daughter  Elsie,  known 
according  to  the  system  of  nomenclature  in  use  among  the 
Netherlanders  as  Elsie  Tymense,  and  who  was  about  fifteen 
or  sixteen  years  of  age  at  the  time  of  her  mother's  marriage 
to  Govert  Loockermans.  Previous  to  this  time,  and  in  the 
year  1646,  Marritje  Janse  had  married  Dirck  Cornelissen  of 
Wensveen,  whose  house  and  land  upon  the  present  Hanover 
Square  has  just  been  referred  to.  Cornelissen  died  a  year  or 
two  after  his  marriage,  leaving  a  son  called  Cornells  Dircksen, 
an  infant  of  about  two  years  of  age  at  the  time  of  his 
mother's  marriage  to  Loockermans.  By  his  wife  Marritje, 
Govert  Loockermans  had  one  child,  Jacob,  born  in  1652,  who 
in  later  years,  following  the  English  nomenclature,  which 
was  gradually  adopted  by  the  Dutch  after  the  surrender  to 
the  English  in  1664,  was  known  as  Jacob  Loockermans. 
The  above-named  persons  constituted  the  family  of  Govert 
Loockermans ;  and  out  of  their  somewhat  complicated  rela- 
tionship grew,  apparently,  certain  important  consequences 
in  after  years. 

Elsie  Tymense  did  not  remain  many  years  in  her  stepfather's 
house  on  the  East  River  shore,  for  in  the  early  part  of  1652 
she  married  a  well-to-do  merchant,  Pieter  Cornelissen  Van- 
derveen,  from  Amsterdam,  and  resided  for  a  number  of  years 
in  her  husband's  house,  near  the  southwest  corner  of  the 
present  Pearl  and  Whitehall  streets,  where  she  was  long  a  close 
neighbor  of  Director-General  Stuyvesant  and  his  family. 
Vanderveen  having  died  about  the  year  1661,  Elsie  married 
Jacob  Leisler,  of  Frankfurt,1  two  years  later,  and  he,  who  had 
come  to  New  Amsterdam  in  the  military  service  of  the  West 
India  Company,  —  Mr.  Valentine  calls  him  an  "officer,"  — 
now  assumed  the  charge  of  her  late  husband's  business,  and 
soon  became,  himself,  a  leading  merchant  of  the  town. 

At  his  house  upon  the  East  River  shore,  G overt  Loocker- 

1  Whether  it  was  the  city  of  that  name  upon  the  Mayu  River,  or  that  upon  the 
Oder,  does  not  appear. 


THE  RIVER  FRONT 


243 


mans  lived  an  active  life  for  many  years.  He  does  not  seem 
to  have  cared  to  mingle  much  in  the  politics  of  his  day,  though 
in  1647  he  was  one  of  the  committee  called  "  the  Nine  Men," 
chosen  by  the  people,  and  who  afterwards  laid  the  grievances 
of  the  colonists  before  the  authorities  in  the  Netherlands.  In 
1657  he  also  served  one  year  as  one  of  the  city  magistrates,  or 
"schepens,"  and  at  the  same  time  he  also  held  the  office  of 
head  or  foreman  of  the  fire  company.  He  took  an  interest 
besides  in  the  affairs  of  the  city  militia  company,  in  which 
he  was  a  lieutenant  at  the  time  of  his  death,  under  Captain 
Martin  Cregier. 

It  has  been  already  stated  that  the  Loockermans'  house  stood 
within  somewhat  spacious  grounds  ;  about  one  hundred  and 
fifty  feet  in  its  rear  there  was  a  wet  depression,  where  there 
seems  to  have  been  at  one  time  a  small  pond ;  here  a  drain 
ditch  was  afterwards  constructed,  and  this  ditch,  or  "  sloot," 
gave  its  name  to  a  narrow  lane  which  was  in  existence  here 
before  the  year  1728,  and  was  long  known  as  "  Sloat  Lane." 
It  is  now  covered  by  the  extension  of  Beaver  Street.  Besides 
thus  caring  for  his  rear  grounds,  Loockermans  had  an  eye  to 
his  fine  river  frontage.  At  an  early  day,  he  had  built,  at  his 
own  expense,  a  Avail  or  piling  all  along  the  shore  in  front  of  his 
premises,  in  order  to  protect  the  bank.  Towards  the  western 
end  of  his  land  and  near  Burger's  Path,  there  was  considerable 
ground  lying  between  the  road  and  the  shore,  and  Loockermans 
made  a  petition  to  the  Director-General  and  Council  in  1656 
for  a  grant  of  this  ground  u  on  which  in  future  some  build- 
ing might  be  erected  to  the  damage  of  petitioner."  The 
ground  was  granted  to  him  accordingly,  with  the  reservation 
to  the  West  India  Company  of  the  right  to  build  a  breastwork 
along  the  piling.  As  has  been  previously  stated,  a  good  por- 
tion of  it,  covering  the  present  Hanover  Square,  was  over- 
grown with  forest  trees  ;  these  were  certainly  in  existence  as 
late  as  1679,  for  they  are  shown  upon  the  very  valuable  sketch 
of  the  Labadists,  Danker  and  Sluyter,  in  that  year.1  Within 

1  This  wooded  bank,  although  a  very  conspicuous  feature  in  any  view  of  the 
East  River  shore  of  New  Amsterdam,  does  not  appear  in  that  group  of  views 


244     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


ten  years  from  that  period,  however,  the  trees  had  probably  all 
disappeared,  and  about  the  year  1690  the  "  Square  "  began  to 
be  built  upon.  A  row  of  three  or  four  houses  of  small  size 
soon  occupied  the  larger  part  of  the  ground,  and  this  was  used 
for  building  purposes  until  the  early  part  of  the  last  century, 
when  the  then  existing  buildings  were  destroyed,  and  the  land 
thrown  into  the  public  thoroughfares  about  it. 

Govert  Loockermans  died  in  the  year  1671.  Before  that 
time,  his  two  daughters  had  been  married,  —  the  eldest, 
Marritje,  to  Balthazar  Bayard,  a  nephew  of  Director-General 
Stuyvesant,  in  1664 ;  and  Jannetje  to  Hans,  the  son  of 
Dr.  Hans  Kiersted,  in  1667.  Go  vert's  son,  Jacob,  who  was 
about  nineteen  years  of  age  at  his  father's  death,  continued  to 
reside  for  some  years  with  his  mother  at  the  homestead,  but  after 
her  death,  in  1677,  he  took  up  his  residence  in  the  Province  of 
Maryland,  succeeding  to  the  estates  of  his  father  there.  He 
had  pursued  the  study  of  medicine,  and  was  a  practising 
"  chyrurgeon  ''  in  that  colony,  residing,  according  to  Valentine, 
at  St.  Mary's,  in  the  southern  part  of  the  State.  He  appears, 
however,  afterwards  as  a  magistrate  of  Dorchester  County, 
upon  the  eastern  shore  of  Chesapeake  Bay. 

There  are  not  wanting  indications  of  a  lack  of  harmony  in 
the  Loockermans  family  at  an  early  date.  When  Govert 
Loockermans  died  intestate,  in  1671,  under  the  English  law 
of  descent  his  son  Jacob  became  the  heir  to  his  father's  con- 
siderable landed  estate  :  Jacob's  half-brother,  Cornells  Dircksen, 

which,  under  various  names,  such  as  the  t(  Allaerdt"  and  the  "  Seutter"  views, 
etc.  (from  the  names  of  the  publishers  in  whose  works  they  are  to  be  found), 
represent  substantially  one  and  the  same  sketch,  and  that  taken  at  a  period  some 
years  earlier  than  the  oue  of  the  Labadists,  —  probably  at  some  time  between 
1667  and  1669.  The  reason  for  this  is  quite  obvious.  If  the  grove  had  been 
represented  in  true  perspective,  it  would  have  concealed  from  sight  a  number  of 
houses  which  the  artists  desired  to  make  appear  in  their  views  of  the  town.  The 
Labadists  resorted  to  the  expedient  of  dwarfing  the  grove,  while  the  other 
draughtsman  omitted  it  altogether  from  his  view,  afterwards  supplying  the  houses 
from  some  sketch  taken  from  another  point,  with  the  result  of  lamentably  distort- 
ing the  perspective  of  the  whole  view,  and  rendering  it  unquestionably  and  grossly 
inaccurate.  It  is  composed  indeed,  in  all  probability,  of  several  distinct  sections 
thus  patched  together. 


JACOB  LEISLER 


245 


died  young,1  and  he  also  inherited  an  estate  from  him.  Jacob 
appears  to  have  been  much  more  under  the  influence  of  Elsie 
Leisler,  his  half-sister  upon  his  mother's  side,  than  under  that 
of  his  half-sisters  upon  his  fathers  side ;  and  in  1679,  he  being 
then,  as  stated,  a  resident  of  Maryland,  he  conveyed  to  Elsie's 
husband,  Jacob  Leisler,  all  his  right  to  the  estate  in  the 
Province  of  New  York  of  Govert  Loockermans,  his  father, 
as  well  as  his  right  to  all  that  which  had  come  to  him  through 
his  mother  —  or  rather  through  his  half-brother,  Cornelis 
Dircksen  —  from  her  former  husband,  Dirck  Cornelissen. 
Nearly  the  whole  estate  of  Govert  Loockermans  and  of  his 
wife  had  thus  come  into  the  hands  of  his  step-daughter  Elsie.2 
It  is  foreign  to  the  purposes  of  this  work  to  treat  at  much 
length  of  the  occurrences  which  led  to  the  condemnation  and 
execution  for  treason,  on  the  16th  of  May,  1691,  of  Jacob 
Leisler,  and  of  his  son-in-law,  Jacob  Milborne.3  It  may  be 
sufficient  to  recall  to  mind  the  fact  that  upon  hearing  of  the 
Revolution  of  1689  in  England,  which  had  driven  James  II. 
from  the  throne  and  replaced  him  by  his  daughter  Mary  and 
by  her  royal  consort  William,  Prince  of  Orange,  Governor 
Dongan  of  New  York  abandoned  his  government  of  the 
colony  and  sailed  for  England.  The  question  of  the  day  then 
became,  who  was  to  take  charge  of  the  affairs  of  the  colony  ? 
At  this  early  period  the  principles  came  into  play  which  after- 

1  Cornelis  Dircksen  died  in  the  early  part  of  the  year  1678,  very  soon  after  the 
death  of  his  mother. 

2  It  is  true  that  in  several  conveyances  of  portions  of  the  Govert  Loockermans' 
estate,  made  within  a  few  years  after  his  death,  the  two  daughters  join  as  parties ; 
hut  it  seems  evident  that  this  was  done  either  by  reason  of  some  agreement  for  the 
purpose  of  quieting  dissension,  or  else  to  satisfy  purchasers  who  had  raised  ohjec- 
tions  growing  out  of  the  obscure  or  ambiguous  clause  in  the  Articles  of  Surrender 
in  1664,  that  the  Dutch  "shall  enjoy  their  owne  customes  concerning  their  inherit- 
ances." In  later  conveyances,  we  find  no  attention  paid  to  the  daughters.  It  mav 
be  further  mentioned,  in  this  connection,  that  while  Govert  Loockermans'  widow, 
Marritje,  in  her  will,  executed  in  1677,  bequeaths  various  articles  of  jewelry  and 
other  keepsakes  to  her  own  children  and  grandchildren,  no  mention  whatever  is 
made  of  her  two  step-daughters. 

3  A  lucid  account  of  this  matter  will  be  found  in  Chapter  XV.  of  Mr.  D.  T. 
Valentine's  "  History  of  New  York." 


246     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


wards  formed  the  foundation  of  the  controversy  which  termi- 
nated in  the  American  Revolution.  On  the  one  hand  was  the 
party  of  Legality,  whose  doctrine  was  that  the  colonies,  being 
simple  dependencies  of  the  Crown  of  England,  with  their  local 
administrations  fixed  by  the  Central  Government  at  London, 
those  administrations  ought  to  continue  until  they  were 
changed  by  that  Central  Government,  and  that  consequently, 
in  the  present  case,  the  control  of  affairs,  in  the  absence  of 
instructions  from  England,  ought  to  remain  with  the  Lieuten- 
ant-Governor, Francis  Nicholson,  and  the  former  Council. 
Prominent  among  the  men  of  this  party  were  Colonel  Nicholas 
Bayard,  the  brother-in-law  of  Marritje  Loockermans,  and 
Stephanus  van  Cortlandt,  her  cousin,  the  son  of  Govert 
Loockermans'  sister  Anneken. 

The  other  party  was  the  party  of  Expediency ;  they  con- 
sidered that  the  management  of  their  own  affairs  ought  to 
belong  to  the  people  of  the  colony.  They  were  not  prepared 
as  yet  to  assert  that  they  "  are  and  of  right  ought  to  be  "  free 
and  independent,  but  they  determined  to  take  possession  of 
what  they  considered  the  vacant  government.  They  contrived 
to  oust  their  opponents,  and  by  means  of  a  self-appointed 
"  Committee  of  Safety,"  usually  resorted  to  in  similar  cases, 
they  conferred  the  chief  power  upon  their  leading  man,  Jacob 
Leisler.  The  legality  of  this  action  was  of  course  denied 
by  the  opposite  party,  and  in  asserting  and  maintaining  his 
authority,  Leisler  acted  with  but  little  discretion.  In  spite  of 
the  frail  nature  of  his  power,  he  affected  to  consider  his 
opponents  as  rebels  and  traitors,  drove  the  leaders  among  them 
from  the  colony,  and  confiscated  the  estates  of  several  of  them, 
and  upon  their  subsequent  return  to  New  York  he  threw 
Bayard  into  prison,  where  he  remained  for  over  a  year ;  while 
Stephanus  van  Cortlandt  succeeded  in  making  his  escape 
from  the  officers  armed  with  a  warrant  for  his  arrest  for  high 
treason. 

When,  finally,  in  March,  1691,  the  new  governor,  Colonel 
Henry  Sloughter,  arrived  from  England,  Leisler  succeeded,  by 
his  punctilios  about  delivering  over  the  government  into  the 


THE  EXECUTIONS 


247 


hands  of  Sloughter,  in  creating  a  hostile  feeling  in  the  mem- 
bers of  the  new  administration;  they  immediately  inclined 
towards  the  party  of  Leisler's  opponents,  and  his  arrest,  trial, 
condemnation,  and  execution  for  treason  followed,  together 
with  the  similar  process  in  the  case  of  his  son-in-law,  Jacob 
Milborne. 

The  malignant  haste,  however,  with  which  these  prose- 
cutions were  urged,  and  the  precipitation  with  which  the 
sentences  were  carried  out,  takes  away  all  merit  from  the 
proceedings,  and  leaves  them  mere  judicial  murders.  As 
Leisler's  seizure  of  power  —  technically  illegal,  no  doubt 
—  was  unquestionably  made  for  and  in  behalf  of  the  reigning 
sovereigns  William  and  Mary,  every  one  concerned  in  the 
prosecution  of  the  prisoners  knew  perfectly  well  that  William 
and  Mary  would  never  have  permitted  them  to  be  punished 
as  traitors  if  the  case  had  reached  them  in  any  proper  way. 
However  exasperating  Leisler's  acts  had  been  to  his  enemies, 
there  were  other  remedies  to  redress  such  wrongs  as  they 
had  suffered;  their  evident  malice  deprived  them  of  any 
sympathy  from  the  great  body  of  the  people,  by  whom  they 
were  looked  upon  in  no  other  light  than  as  murderers,  while 
their  victims  were  glorified  as  heroes  and  martyrs. 

As  for  Elsie  Leisler  and  her  children,  the  blow  fell  upon 
them  with  crushing  force.  Four  years  afterwards  the  Eng- 
lish Parliament  reversed  the  attainder  for  treason  of  Leisler 
and  Milborne,  and  restored  their  confiscated  property  to  their 
heirs ;  but  most  of  the  joy  of  life  had  departed  for  Elsie 
Leisler.  Always  she  could  see  before  her  that  dark  May 
morning,  with  the  rain  pouring  down  upon  the  scaffold  and 
the  angry  or  pitying  crowd  around  it,  and  could  hear  the 
words  of  her  son-in-law  :  "  We  are  thoroughly  wet  with  rain, 
but  in  a  little  time  we  shall  be  washed  with  the  Holy  Spirit," 
or  those  of  her  husband,  as  the  handkerchief  was  bound  about 
his  head :  "  I  hope  my  eyes  shall  see  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
in  heaven ;  I  am  ready  !  I  am  ready  !  " 

"Her  family  misfortunes,"  says  Valentine,  speaking  of 
Mrs.  Leisler,  "surrounded  her  with  sympathetic  neighbors, 


248     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


but  she  maintained  a  reserved  and  humble  deportment,  mix- 
ing but  little  with  the  world,  and  confining  herself  to  her 
own  domestic  sphere."  That  her  troubles  had  endeared  her 
to  her  children  is  well  attested,  across  two  centuries  of  time, 
by  so  prosaic  an  evidence  as  the  time-stained  records  in  the 
New  York  Register's  office,  wherein,  on  the  19th  of  July, 
1699,  Jacob  Leisler,  the  younger,  appoints  as  his  attorney- 
in-fact,  "his  dear  and  affectionate  mother,  Elsie  Leisler, 
wicldow."  1 

The  Loockermans'  homestead  upon  the  present  Hanover 
Square  had  passed  out  of  the  hands  of  that  family  some 
years  before  the  struggle  between  the  Leislerian  and  the  anti- 
Leislerian  factions  took  place.  Although  somewhat  outside 
of  the  plan  of  our  survey,  it  may  be  of  some  interest  to  follow 
the  subsequent  history  of  this  property  for  a  short  period. 
What  remained  of  it,  —  for  several  parcels  had  been  previ- 
ously sold  off  from  time  to  time  —  came,  within  a  short  time 
after  the  death,  in  1677  or  1678,  of  Marritje,  the  widow  of 
G overt  Loockermans,  into  the  hands  of  one  John  Robinson, 
who  purchased  the  family  residence.  This  man  was  a  mer- 
chant of  New  York,  who  was  interested  in  the  export  of 
flour,  and  who,  at  the  time  he  acquired  the  Loockermans' 
homestead,  was  engaged  in  the  construction  of  a  flour-mill 
upon  the  small  stream  known  as  the  Sawkill,  which  emptied 
into  the  East  River  about  at  the  foot  of  the  present  Seventy- 
fourth  Street,  along  which  stream  he  had  a  farm  of  nearly 
forty  acres  carved  out  of  the  forest.2    There  he  became  in 

1  See  Liber  XXII.  of  Conveyances,  page  323. 

2  Mr.  D.  T.  Valentine,  having  read  in  the  "Journal  "  of  Rev.  Charles  Woolley, 
who  visited  New  York  about  1679,  an  account  of  a  bear  having  been  "  treed  "  in 
or  near  an  orchard  belonging  to  John  Robinson  (Avith  whom  Woolley  was  connected 
either  by  relationship  or  by  business  interests),  —  and  apparently  not  having  ob- 
served that  John  Robinson's  farm  lay  in  the  midst  of  the  then  unbroken  forest 
along  the  East  River  shore,  where  the  presence  of  a  bear  at  that  time  was  no 
great  marvel,  —  has  calmly  proceeded  in  some  of  his  historical  writings  to  transfer 
the  bear  hunt  to  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  house  and  small  parcel  of  land 
belonging  to  Robinson  near  the  present  Hanover  Square.  Mr.  Valentine  has  not 
only  conducted  his  bear  through  three  or  four  miles  of  open  farming  country 
into  the  heart  of  a  good-sized  town,  and  led  the  animal  over  the  town  ditch  and 


WILLIAM  COX 


249 


some  way  connected  in  business  dealings  with  William  Cox 
to  whom  on  February  12,  1684,  he  sold  a  half-interest  in  his 
mill  and  farm. 

William  Cox  was  in  some  respects  a  singular  character, 
about  whose  history  not  very  much  is  known.  He  seems  to 
have  been  a  young  man  with  considerable  means,  who  had  ap- 
parently been  in  New  York  for  some  little  time  prior  to 
1683,  for  in  that  year  he  was  an  alderman  of  the  city.  With 
him,  in  the  city,  resided  his  mother,  whom  he,  as  well  as  she 
herself,  calls  by  the  curious  appellation  of  "  Alice  Cox,  abas 
Bono."  1  As  to  his  business,  he  called  himself  sometimes  a 
merchant,  and  at  other  times  a  "  bolter,"  from  his  milling 
operations. 

In  1685,  William  Cox  married  a  young  woman  who  was 
destined  to  figure  more  prominently  in  the  affairs  of  the  day 
than  she  could  have  desired.  She  wras  Sarah,  the  daughter  of 
Captain  Thomas  Bradley,  who  with  her  father  and  her  young 
brothers  Samuel  and  Henry  had  come  over  from  England  and 
taken  up  their  residence  in  New  York.  She  is  said  to  have 
been  handsome  and  dashing,  but  was  rather  illiterate,  for  in 
various  documents  executed  by  her  in  her  earlier  years  she 
makes  her  mark  in  the  signature,  —  though  not  so  in  after 
years. 

On  the  21st  of  January,  1688  (N.  S.),  William  Cox  bought 
from  John  Robinson  his  house  and  ground  previously  spoken 
of  upon  the  present  Hanover  Square,  being  the  former  Loock- 
ermans'  homestead ;  Cox  himself  may  never  have  resided  in 
this  house,  for  in  about  a  year  from  this  time  we  find  him 
purchasing  another  house  upon  the  north  side  of  Wall  Street, 
which  street  was  then  beginning  to  be  built  up  with  a  better 

palisades  into  a  non-existent  orchard,  but,  what  is  worse,  he  has  afforded  an 
opportunity  to  some  of  the  writers  who  have  followed  him,  for  some  very  pain- 
fully elaborated  attempts  at  witticisms  respecting  Mr.  Valentine's  bear  and  the 
"  bears  "  of  tbe  supposed  neighboring  Wall  Street. 

1  By  the  will  of  this  lady,  bearing  date  June  13,  1694,  she  bequeaths  to  her 
"  dearly  beloved  brother,  Mr.  Robert  Blackburne,  dry-fish  monger  in  London," 
the  sum  of  £100.  The  rest  of  her  estate  she  gives  to  John  Theobalds,  one  of 
her  executors,  u  to  dispose  of  the  same  to  his  children,  or  to  whomsoever  he 
pleaseth."    (See  Will,  N.  Y.  Surrogate's  office.) 


250     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


class  of  houses  than  had  previously  been  found  there,  and  in 
this  latter  dwelling  he  unquestionably  resided  during  the 
short  remainder  of  his  life. 

It  was  in  the  summer  of  the  year  1689  that  the  community 
was  in  a  ferment  over  the  action  of  Jacob  Leisler  and  his 
party  in  seizing  upon  the  government  of  the  colony;  Wil- 
liam Cox  became  a  prominent  supporter  of  Leisler,  was 
one  of  the  so-called  "  Committee  of  Safety  "  of  the  Leisler- 
ians,  and  lost  his  life  about  August,  1689,  while  engaged  upon 
the  business  of  his  chief.  The  account  of  this  affair  is  given 
with  considerable  flippancy  by  John  Tuder,  Cox's  political 
enemy  (afterwards  recorder  of  the  city),  in  a  letter,  dated 
August  — ,  1689,  to  Captain  Nicholson,  the  ousted  Lieutenant- 
Governor  :  — 

"  Mr.  Cox,  to  show  his  fine  cloaths,  undertooke  to  goe  to  Amboy 
to  proclaime  the  King,  who  coming  whome  againe,  was  fairely 
drowned,  which  accident  startled  our  commanders  here  very  much  : 
there  is  a  good  rich  widdow  left.  The  manner  of  his  being 
drowned  was  comeing  on  board  in  a  cannow  from  Captn  Cornelis' 
Point  at  Staten  Islands,  goeing  into  the  boate,  slipt  downe  be- 
twixt the  cannow  and  the  boate,  the  water  not  being  above  his 
chiun,  but  very  muddy,  stuck  fast  in,  and  striving  to  get  out, 
bobbing  his  head  under,  receaved  to  much  water  in.  They 
brought  him  ashore  with  life  in  him,  but  all  would  not  fetch  him 
againe." 

The  u  good  rich  widdow "  did  not  remain  a  widow  long, 
for  in  a  very  short  time  she  married  J ohn  Oort,  who  is  some- 
times spoken  of  as  a  merchant,  and  at  others  as  a  ship  cap- 
tain, but  his  married  life  was  of  short  duration.  The  fact  is, 
that  among  this  little  coterie  of  English  merchants  and  cap- 
tains and  their  families,  events  succeeded  one  another  with 
bewildering  rapidity.  On  the  15th  of  July,  1689,  William 
Cox,  then  apparently  in  full  health  and  vigor,  executed  his 
last  will  and  testament,  and  on  the  9th  of  August  following, 
after  the  unfortunate  occurrence  whereby  he  had  "  receaved 
to  much  water  in,"  his  will  was  admitted  to  probate.  By 


WILLIAM  COX'S  WILL 


251 


the  15th  of  May,  1691,  Sarah  Oort  had  about  finished  her 
mourning  for  both  her  deceased  husbands,  for  upon  that  day 
she  took  out  letters  of  administration  upon  the  estate  of  the 
late  John  Oort;  while  upon  the  next  day,  the  16th  of  May,  a 
license  was  issued,  under  the  forms  of  the  colonial  law,  for 
her  marriage  to  Captain  William  Kidd. 

The  newly  married  couple  resided  for  several  years  in  the 
house  which  Mrs.  Kidd's  first  husband,  William  Cox,  had 
purchased,  upon  the  present  Pearl  Street.  This  house  had 
passed  to  Cox's  widow  by  virtue  of  a  very  curious  provision 
in  the  will  of  her  husband.  In  the  first  part  of  this  document 
Cox  appears  to  have  designed  the  house  in  question  for  his 
wife's  brother :  "  I  give  to  Samuel  Bradley,  my  brother-in- 
law,  my  other  house,  which  I  bought  of  Mr.  John  Robinson, 
or  this  house  which  I  now  live  in,1  my  wife  taking  her  first 
choice,  and  God  sending  my  brother-in-law  an  heyrc,  that  he 
call  his  name  Cox  Bradley  " :  later  the  testator  remembers 
a  moral  obligation  which  he  considers  himself  under,  and  con- 
tinues :  "  My  desire  is  that  this  house  where  I  now  dwell  in 
shall  be  for  my  brother  Samuel  and  his  heyres  as  above 
expressed,  by  reason  of  fulfilling  an  oath  formerly  solemnly 
sworne  to  my  mother,  she  forcing  me  to  passion,  in  fulfilling 
whereof  I  desire  that  there  may  be  no  contention  after  my 
decease,  concerning  ye  said  house."  After  making  several 
bequests  to  his  mother,  and  to  others,  Cox  left  the  remainder, 
being  a  considerable  estate,  to  his  wife  Sarah,  —  the  goods 
in  his  store  were  alone  inventoried  at  1900Z.,  —  so  that  the 
stories  about  her  later  husband,  Captain  William  Kidd,  be- 
ing a  needy  adventurer,  when  he  started  out  upon  his  fatal 
voyage  in  the  "  Adventure  "  galley,  five  years  later,  are  quite 
false. 

The  tendency  of  modern  historical  criticism  —  at  any  rate 
among  American  writers  —  is  not  to  regard  William  Kidd  as 
the  Raw-Head-and-Bloody-Bones  which  he  was  once  popularly 
considered,  but  to  look  upon  him  as  having  been  to  a  consider- 


1  Upon  the  north  side  of  Wall  Street. 


252     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


able  extent  a  vicarious  sacrifice  to  save  the  reputation  of  men 
occupying  a  great  deal  higher  station  than  himself. 

If,  at  the  present  day,  the  President  of  the  United  States, 
together  with  the  Secretary  of  State,  and  three  or  four  more 
members  of  the  Cabinet  and  governors  of  States  or  Territories, 
should  agree,  in  private  conference,  that  inasmuch  as  thefts, 
highway  robberies,  and  train  robberies,  kidnapping,  and  other 
crimes  of  violence  had  increased  to  an  intolerable  degree 
within  the  territories  of  the  United  States,  but  that  on 
account  of  the  oppressive  taxation  necessary  to  support  the 
military  operations  of  the  country  in  various  quarters  of  the 
globe,  no  further  demands  ought  to  be  made  or  could  safely  be 
made  upon  the  heavily  burdened  people;  and  should  there- 
upon form  an  association  —  each  one  contributing  a  certain 
amount  of  money  to  it  —  for  the  purpose  of  equipping  a  pri- 
vate armed  force  to  arrest  or  to  destroy  the  outlaws,  and  stipu- 
lating that  each  one  of  the  association  should  receive  a  certain 
proportion  of  the  money  and  effects  to  bo  taken  from  such 
outlaws ;  if  in  addition  to  this,  it  should  be  agreed  that  the 
leader  of  this  force,  as  well  as  the  men  under  his  command, 
were  themselves  to  receive  no  compensation  for  their  services 
except  a  further  proportion  of  the  effects  of  the  alleged  law- 
breakers, —  if  all  this  were  to  be  done,  it  is  very  certain  that  a 
general  chorus  of  animadversion  would  be  raised,  not  only  by 
the  opposite  political  party  in  this  country,  but  by  all  the 
civilized  nations  of  the  earth. 

This,  however,  is  substantially  what  was  done  in  England 
in  the  year  1695.  In  the  course  of  the  wars  between  France 
and  England,  piracy  had  greatly  increased  upon  the  seas,  much 
to  the  disturbance  of  the  English,  who  looked  upon  the  crime 
in  an  altogether  different  light  when  it  was  carried  on  against 
their  commerce  than  when  it  was  maintained  (largely  by 
themselves)  against  the  Spanish.  William  III.  was  particu- 
larly anxious  to  have  the  pirates  suppressed,  and  as  they  were 
supposed  to  have  a  good  deal  of  support  in  the  American 
colonies,  and  especially  in  New  York,  the  king  had  selected 
Richard  Coote,  Earl  of  Bellamont,  as  Governor  of  New  York, 


BELLAMONT'S  SCHEME 


253 


to  supplant  Colonel  Benjamin  Fletcher,  and  had  given  him 
special  instructions  to  operate  against  the  pirates.  It  now 
became  a  question  how  these  operations  against  the  pirates 
should  be  carried  on :  the  government,  deeply  involved  in  the 
war  with  France,  could  spare  neither  ships,  men,  nor  money ; 
but  the  Earl  of  Bellamont,  in  conjunction  with  Robert 
Livingston  of  New  York  (who  is  said  to  have  been  the  origina- 
tor of  the  scheme),  formed  a  plan  for  sending  out  a  private 
expedition,  under  warrant  from  the  English  government. 
For  the  commander  of  this  expedition,  Bellamont  and  Living- 
ston fixed  upon  Captain  William  Kidd,  who  had  now  been 
living  for  about  four  years  in  the  house  at  the  present 
Hanover  Square  in  New  York.  Kidd,  who  is  said  to  have  been 
a  native  of  Greenock,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Clyde  River  in 
Scotland  (then  a  mere  village  of  fishers),  was  about  thirty-five 
years  of  age  at  this  time,  a  careful  and  experienced  sea-captain 
of  good  repute,  who  as  early  as  1691  had  served  with  dis- 
tinction against  the  French.  Kidd  was  also  familiar  with  the 
haunts  of  the  pirates,  and  had  sanguine  views  about  the  ease 
with  which  he  could  capture  them. 

Having  submitted  their  plan  to  the  king,  and  received  his 
sanction,  articles  of  agreement  were  drawn  up  on  the  10th  of 
October,  1695,  between  the  Earl  of  Bellamont  and  Kidd, 
whereby  Bellamont  undertakes  to  procure,  from  the  king  or 
from  the  commissioners  of  Admiralty,  commissions  to  Kidd  to 
fight  the  king's  enemies  or  pirates,  and  also  agrees  to  furnish 
four-fifths  of  the  cost  of  buying  and  fitting  up  a  proper  ves- 
sel, the  remaining  fifth  being  furnished  by  Kidd  and  Living- 
ston together.  Kidd  on  his  part  agrees  to  take  such  prizes  as 
he  can,  and  forthwith  to  make  the  best  of  his  way  to  Boston  to 
condemn  them,  "  without  touching  at  any  other  place  whatso- 
ever," and  he  further  agrees  to  enlist  his  men,  "  no  purchase, 
no  pay,"  —  that  is,  they  must  look  to  their  prizes  for  compen- 
sation. Both  Kidd  and  Livingston  entered  into  bonds  for  a 
considerable  amount  to  secure  their  part  of  the  undertaking. 
As  for  the  Earl  of  Bellamont's  share,  it  was  in  part  made  up, 
in  sums  of  about  £1000  each,  by  the  following  distinguished 


254     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


partners:  Lord  John  Somers,  Keeper  of  the  Great  Seal; 
the  Earl  of  Romney,  Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland;  the  Earl 
of  Shrewsbury,  Secretary  of  State;  and  the  Earl  of  Or- 
ford,  First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty.  One  tenth  part  was 
to  be  reserved  for  the  king,  in  token  of  his  approval  of  the 
scheme.  Kidd  was  thereupon  granted  two  commissions,  one 
bearing  date  December  10,  1695,  an  ordinary  commission  to 
act  against  the  French;  the  other  an  extraordinary  one 
dated  26th  January,  1695-96,  to  apprehend  and  seize  all 
pirates. 

The  dangers  of  admitting  a  large  body  of  sailors  into  this 
sort  of  speculation,  by  making  their  pay  contingent  upon 
their  success,  were  fully  realized  in  England.  Sir  Edmund 
Harrison,  who  was  one  of  the  contributors  to  the  enterprise, 
took  care,  —  as  we  are  informed  in  the  pamphlet  upon  the 
Kidd  Case,  known  as  "  Letters  from  a  Person  of  Quality,"  etc. 
(avowedly  written  in  the  interest  of  the  Earl  of  Bellamont) 
—  that  everyone  of  Kidd's  officers,  and  almost  all  the  seamen, 
had  settled  families  in  England :  "  true  it  is,  this  last  care 
was  in  a  great  degree  rendered  ineffectual,  for  most  of  his  crew 
were  pressed  into  the  King's  service  before  he  got  out  of  the 
river."  Of  course  it  is  incredible  that  Kidd  should  not  have 
complained  of  this  interference  with  his  commission ;  the  act 
was  evidently  notorious  ;  the  intervention  of  the  king  or  of  the 
First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty,  both  of  whom  were  partners 
with  Kidd  in  tins  enterprise,  would  undoubtedly  have  been 
sufficient  to  restore  these  picked  men  at  once ;  and  Kidd 
lingered  at  Plymouth  until  April,  1696,  and  yet  he  was  per- 
mitted by  those  in  power  to  depart  on  such  an  errand  as  his 
with  hardly  any  men,  and  without  the  prospect  of  getting 
any  except  the  unstable  characters  whom  he  might  succeed  in 
alluring  into  his  service  in  the  colonies.  He  sailed  finally  for 
New  York  with  his  ship,  the  now  notorious  "  Adventure  " 
galley,  and  at  that  port  he  filled  out  his  complement  of  men. 
Of  their  character  the  English  government  was  fully  informed 
by  a  letter  from  Governor  Benjamin  Fletcher  to  the  Lords 


CAPTAIN  KIDD  AND  HIS  CREW 


255 


of  Trade  in  England : 1  "  One  Captain  Kidd  lately  arrived 
here,  and  produced  a  commission  under  the  Great  Seal  of 
England,  for  suppressing  of  piracy.  When  he  was  here 
many  nocked  to  him  from  all  parts,  men  of  desperate  fortunes 
and  necessitous,  in  expectation  of  getting  vast  treasure.  .  .  . 
It  is  generally  believed  here  they  will  have  money  per  fas  aid 
nefas ;  that  if  he  miss  of  the  design  intended,  for  which  he 
has  commission,  't  will  not  be  in  Kidcl's  power  to  govern  such 
a  hord  of  men,  under  no  pay." 

In  July,  1696,  Kidd  sailed  from  New  York  for  the  Straits 
of  Madagascar.  From  this  time,  for  more  than  a  year  and  a 
half,  we  have  no  accurate  knowledge  of  what  took  place  on 
the  "  Adventure  "  galley.  Kidd's  own  full  statement  was  never 
allowed  to  be  made  public,  but  even  from  the  one-sided  testi- 
mony produced  upon  the  so-called  "  trials  "  of  the  indictments 
against  him  (taken  in  conjunction  with  a  few  known  facts), 
there  is  the  strongest  evidence  that  what  had  been  anticipated 
actually  occurred.  The  partners  in  this  enterprise  had  been 
too  sanguine.  Such  pirates  as  were  upon  the  seas  kept  care- 
fully out  of  Kidd's  way,  and  French  prizes  were  few  and  far 
between.  The  lawless  characters  composing  the  greater  part  of 
the  crew  of  the  "  Adventure  "  became  enraged  at  their  ill-luck, 
and  at  the  failure  of  Kidd's  promises  to  them ;  they  mutinied 
about  the  month  of  September,  1697,  and  from  that  time  for  a 
period  of  about  four  months,  Kidd  appears  to  have  been  prac- 
tically a  prisoner  in  the  hands  of  his  rebellious  crew.  Their 
ascendancy  over  him  was  greatly  enhanced  soon  after  the 
above-named  date  by  an  unfortunate  occurrence,  whereby 
Kidd,  in  a  fit  of  passion,  struck  with  a  water  bucket  one  of 
the  mutineers  named  William  Moore  in  such  a  manner  that 
he  died  within  a  day  or  two  from  the  effects  of  the 
blow.2 

1  The  letter  will  be  found  in  4  Col.  Doc.,  p.  275.  It  is  not  dated,  but  must 
have  been  written  iu  the  latter  part  of  1696. 

2  Kidd,  as  is  well  known,  was  tried  at  the  Old  Bailey  upon  an  indictment  for 
the  killing  of  this  man.  The  trial  took  place  at  the  same  time  with  the  trials  of 
the  indictments  for  piracy.    The  witnesses  for  the  government  were  the  same  two 


256     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Within  the  period  of  four  months,  above  mentioned,  five  or 
six  vessels  are  stated  in  the  indictments  and  in  the  testimony 
taken  thereupon  to  have  been  captured  by  the  "  Adventure  " 
galley.  Most  of  these  were  Arabian  or  "  Moorish  "  coasters 
of  the  most  insignificant  size  and  value,  one  of  them,  of  fifty 
tons'  burden,  yielded  a  little  coffee  and  sugar,  and  "  some  sugar 
candy  ;  "  out  of  another,  some  coffee,  pepper,  and  myrrh,  worth 

persons  made  use  of  as  State's  evidence  in  the  piracy  trials, — the  mutineer, 
Joseph  Palmer,  and  the  drunken  surgeon,  Robert  Bradinham.  Kidd  had  no 
witnesses  for  his  defence  except  those  members  of  his  crew  who  had  been 
brought  with  him  under  arrest,  from  America  to  England.  In  the  piracy 
trials  their  mouths  were  closed  in  his  behalf,  for  they  were  jointly  indicted  with 
him ;  but  in  tbe  murder  trial,  he  was  allowed  to  call  them  as  witnesses.  Un- 
fortunately, however,  they  had  seen  little  or  nothing  of  the  occurrence.  Kidd, 
it  must  be  remembered,  under  the  criminal  procedure  of  that  period,  was  not 
allowed  to  testify  in  his  own  behalf.  The  respective  trials  for  murder  and  for 
piracy  throw  much  light  one  upon  another.  It  appears  that  about  a  fortnight 
before  the  killing  of  William  Moore,  Kidd  had  fallen  in  with  a  vessel  called  the 
"  Loyal  Captain,"  which  he  had  allowed  to  proceed  upon  its  way,  to  the  great 
dissatisfaction  of  his  crew ;  the  sailor,  Moore,  it  seems,  had  been  charged  with 
exciting  discontent  among  the  others,  by  going  about  among  them,  saying  that 
if  the  captain  would  have  listened  to  him,  he  could  have  taken  the  vessel,  with- 
out incurring  any  liability.  The  story  of  the  killing,  as  given  by  the  witness 
Palmer,  was  this  :  "Captain  Kidd  came  and  walked  on  the  deck,  and  walks  by 
this  Moore,  and  when  he  came  to  him  says,  '  which  way  could  you  have  put  me 
in  a  way  to  take  the  ship  and  been  clear  ?  '  '  Sir,'  says  William  Moore, 1 1  never 
spoke  such  a  Avord,  nor  ever  thought  such  a  thing,'  upon  which  Captain  Kidd 
called  him  a  '  lousy  dog,'  and  says  William  Moore,  '  If  I  am  a  lousy  dog,  you 
have  made  me  so  ;  you  have  brought  me  to  ruin  and  many  more '  —  upon  his 
saying  this,  says  Captain  Kidd,  '  Have  I  ruined  you,  ye  dog  ?  '  and  took  a  bucket 
bound  with  iron  hoops,  and  struck  him  on  the  right  side  of  the  head,  of  which 
he  died  the  next  day." 

Macaulay,  writing  up  the  glories  of  his  idolized  William  III.  and  of  Lord  John 
Somers,  tells  of  the  "  agony  of  remorse  "  with  which  William  Moore  uttered  the 
above  remark.  If  one  can  shake  off  the  charm  of  the  great  historian's  pictur- 
esque style  long  enough  to  examine  critically  his  remarkably  inaccurate  account 
of  this  affair,  he  will  be  apt  to  conclude,  —  inasmuch  as  the  occurrence  took  place  be- 
fore the  alleged  piratical  depredations  of  the  "  Adventure  "  galley,  —  that  William 
Moore's  remark  to  his  captain  was  made  much  more  in  a  spirit  of  surly  reproach 
fur  having  been  induced  by  him  to  enter  an  unremunerative  service  than  in  any 
"agony  of  remorse."  As  for  William  Moore  himself,  he  appears  to  have  been 
previously  in  trouble,  and  under  arrest  in  New  York  upon  several  occasions,  for 
difficulties  between  himself  and  his  superior  officers.  (Vide  Colonial  MSS., 
N.  Y.  State  Library.) 


KIDD'S  ALLEGED  PIRACIES 


257 


about  $100,  were  taken  on  board  the  "  Adventure/'  and  the 
vessel  then  was  allowed  to  proceed  upon  its  way ;  this  was 
the  earliest  act  of  piracy  charged,  and  as  it  is  hardly  credible 
that  these  trifles  formed  the  whole  cargo  of  the  "  Moorish  " 
vessel,  they  may  have  been  nothing  more  than  the  private 
property  of  a  Portuguese  who  was  transferred  at  this  time 
to  the  "  Adventure,"  to  act  as  an  interpreter;  no  cross-exam- 
ination by  counsel,  upon  the  trials,  was  permitted  to  throw 
any  light  upon  these  matters.  As  to  the  other  captures,  one 
or  two  of  them  were  made  by  boats'  crews,  and  the  whole 
series  of  them  seems  to  be  much  more  the  work  of  a  lawless 
gang  of  ruffians,  ready  to  take  anything  that  came  in  their 
way,  than  that  of  an  experienced  sea-captain,  who  was  not 
laboring  under  any  suspicions  of  lunacy. 

On  the  27th  of  November,  1697,  the  "  Adventure  "  captured 
off  Surat  a  Moorish  ship,  which,  according  to  Kidd's  claim, 
was  sailing  under  French  papers.  This  of  course  he  was 
justified  in  seizing  under  his  commission,  and  it  then  became 
his  duty  to  have  taken  her  at  once  to  Boston,  in  pursuance 
of  his  agreement  with  Bellamont,  to  have  her  condemned  in 
a  prize  court.  The  vessel  and  her  cargo,  however,  were  of 
but  little  value,  and  the  crew,  as  was  further  claimed  by 
Kidd  (and  with  great  probability  of  truth),  refused  to  waste 
so  many  months  on  a  voyage  from  the  Persian  Gulf  to 
Boston ;  the  few  articles  of  value  of  this  vessel's  cargo  seem 
to  have  been  taken  possession  of  by  the  "  Adventure's " 
men,  and  some  of  them  carried  on  shore  and  sold  at  dif- 
ferent points  along  the  coast. 

On  the  30th  of  January,  1698  (N.  S.),  however,  the  "Ad- 
venture "  captured  a  prize  of  a  different  character.  This  was 
the  famous  "  Quedagh  "  or  "  Quiddah  "  merchant.  She  was 
sailing  with  French  papers,  as  was  claimed  by  Kidd,  and  her 
cargo,  of  which  a  large  part  belonged  to  some  Armenian  mer- 
chants, was  a  very  valuable  one.  Kidd's  crew  were  no  more 
disposed  to  sail  to  Boston  with  this  prize  than  with  the 
others.  They  had  already  done  enougli  in  the  way  of  mutiny 
and  piracy  to  bring  them  into  the  most  imminent  danger  of 

17 


258     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


their  lives,  but  they  had  now  in  their  hands  enough  to  com- 
pensate them  for  the  risks  they  had  run.  A  goodly  portion 
of  the  valuable  cargo  of  the  "  Quedagh  "  was  sold,  in  what 
manner  we  have  no  definite  information,  at  various  points 
upon  the  coasts  of  India;  the  u  Adventure's "  crew  divided 
among  themselves  a  large  amount  of  money  obtained  in  this 
way ;  and  then  the  greater  portion  of  the  men,  being  nearly 
a  hundred  in  number,  abandoned  the  vessels,  went  on  shore 
with  their  gains,  and  dispersed  themselves  in  such  directions 
as  they  thought  best. 

There  remained  now  about  fifty  men  with  Kidd,  and  with 
these  he  started  to  return  to  the  American  colonies.  The 
"  Adventure  "  having  become  leaky,  it  was  abandoned,  and 
Kidd  and  his  crew  sailed  in  the  "  Quedagh  "  merchant,  and 
seem  to  have  arrived  in  the  West  Indies  in  the  latter  part 
of  1698,  or  in  the  early  part  of  1699. 

In  the  mean  time,  reports  of  the  work  of  the  "  Adventure  " 
galley  reached  England,  and  excited  great  consternation 
among  Captain  Kidd's  distinguished  partners.  Political  ani- 
mosities ran  high  at  this  time,  and  the  party  opposed  to  the 
government  eagerly  seized  upon  this  piece  of  scandal  for 
political  capital.  Vigorous  measures  of  some  kind  had  to 
be  taken  by  the  administration,  and  accordingly,  upon  the 
16th  of  December,  1698,  before  any  definite  or  trustworthy 
account  of  Captain  Kidd's  doings  could  possibly  have  reached 
England,  a  proclamation  was  issued  by  the  English  govern- 
ment, offering  a  pardon  to  all  persons  guilty  of  piratical 
practices,  who  should  surrender  themselves  before  a  certain 
date  to  commissioners  named  for  that  purpose.  From  the 
benefit  of  this  proclamation,  Captain  William  Kidd  was  ex- 
pressly excluded. 

It  is  uncertain  whether  or  not  Kidd  first  heard  of  this 
proclamation  in  the  West  Indies,  though  it  seems  quite 
probable  that  he  did.  Under  any  circumstances,  and  whether 
guilty  or  innocent,  he  had  to  anticipate  much  trouble  ahead 
for  himself ;  and  it  was  probably  from  this  reason  that  he 
seems  to  have  adopted  an  expedient  the  practical  effect  of 


KIDD  RETURNS  TO  NEW  YORK 


259 


which  has  been  to  obscure  both  his  own  conduct  and  that 
of  the  high-placed  parties  with  whom  he  was  associated, 
but  which  —  though  ill-judged  —  is  not  incompatible  with 
his  own  innocence  of  the  main  charges  against  him. 

This  expedient  was  to  retain,  or  to  give  the  impression  that 
he  retained,  upon  his  surrender  of  himself  to  the  government, 
a  sufficient  security  under  his  own  control,  to  enable  him  to 
force  the  government  to  grant  him  the  immunity  from  prose- 
cution or  the  pardon,  to  which  he  claimed  to  be  entitled. 

Accordingly,  leaving  his  vessel  and  what  remained  of  her 
cargo  (and  this  was  of  great  value,  according  to  his  asser- 
tion) under  the  care  of  a  small  guard  at  some  undisclosed 
place  in  the  West  Indies,  Kidd  with  forty  or  fifty  of  his  men 
made  their  appearance  in  the  early  part  of  1699,  in  a  small 
coasting  vessel  in  the  vicinity  of  New  York,  and  after  de- 
positing certain  valuables  upon  Gardiner's  Island,  and  at  one 
or  two  other  points,  the  captain  opened  communications, 
through  Mr.  James  Emott,  a  New  York  attorney,  witli 
Lord  Bellamont,  who  was  then  at  Boston,  he  being  Governor 
of  Massachusetts  as  well  as  of  New  York.  Kidd's  proposi- 
tion was  a  simple  one.  He  offered  to  turn  over  to  Lord 
Bellamont  and  to  the  government  the  "  Quedagh  "  merchant 
and  such  part  of  the  cargo  and  of  the  proceeds  thereof  as 
remained  in  his  hands,  upon  receiving  a  pardon  and  indem- 
nity against  loss  on  the  bond  which  he  had  given.  With  his 
communication  to  Lord  Bellamont,  Kidd  sent,  by  his  agent 
Emott,  as  announced  by  Bellamont  to  the  Council  in  Boston, 
"  two  French  papers,  found  in  two  ships  taken  by  said  Kidds 
Co.,  by  violence  against  his  will." 

There  is  little  question  that  at  this  stage  of  the  affair,  Bel- 
lamont accepted  Kidd's  version  of  the  transactions  which  had 
taken  place,  and  wished  to  accept  his  proposition.  44 1  make 
no  doubt,"  he  writes  to  Kidd,  "but  to  obtain  the  king's  par- 
don for  you  and  those  few  men  you  have  left,  who,  I  under- 
stand, have  been  faithful  to  you  and  refused,  as  well  as  you, 
to  dishonor  the  commission  you  had  from  England."  After- 
wards, when  it  became  evident  that  Kidd  was  to  be  sacrificed 


2G0     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


to  the  interests  of  the  Whig  administration,  it  suited  Bella- 
mont  to  proclaim  that  his  letter  to  Kidd  had  been  merely  a 
lying  one.  In  a  letter  from  New  York  to  Secretary  Vernon, 
dated  December  6,  1700,  he  says:  "When  I  writ  that  letter 
to  Kid  by  Burgesse,  I  had  an  account  that  he  was  certainly 
turned  pyrate ;  and  then  I  could  not  be  blamed  to  have  a 
just  indignation  against  him,  and  to  try  hy  all  means  to  get 
him  into  my  hands,  and  'tis  plain  menacing  him  had  not  been 
the  way  to  invite  him  hither,  but  rather  wheedling,  and  that 
way  I  took,  and  after  that  manner  I  got  him  at  last  into  Bos- 
ton, when  I  secured  him.,, 

Whatever  Bellamont's  motives  may  have  been,  and  under 
whatever  orders,  if  any,  from  the  English  government  he  may 
have  been  acting,  it  is  certain  that  Kidd,  soon  after  his  land- 
ing at  Boston,  was  placed  under  arrest  and  sent  to  England. 
There  he  remained  in  prison,  without  being  brought  to  trial, 
from  the  summer  of  1G99  till  May,  1701,  —  nearly  two  years. 
What  the  reasons  were  for  this  delay,  we  do  not  know ;  they 
may  have  arisen  from  an  attempt  to  extort  from  Kidd  his 
secret  as  to  the  alleged  wealth  he  had  concealed ;  or  there 
may  have  been  compunction  about  carrying  out  the  punish- 
ment of  Kidd ;  or  perhaps  the  opposition  party  did  not  allow 
the  government  a  free  hand ;  in  the  absence  of  authentic  in- 
formation, we  can  only  surmise. 

Just  at  this  point,  the  criminality  of  Lord  Somers  and  of  his 
associates  —  not  excepting  the  king  —  commences.  It  was 
of  course  evident  that  if  Kidd  was  not  to  be  punished,  there 
was  scarcely  a  possibility  that  any  of  his  mutinous  crew,  by 
that  time  scattered  all  over  the  globe,  would  ever  be  brought 
to  punishment,  and  the  scandal  of  the  "  Adventure's  "  doings 
would  remain,  as  a  perpetual  reproach  to  the  Whig  adminis- 
tration, and  a  menace  to  the  not  too  firmly  established  Prot- 
estant succession  to  the  English  throne. 

Two  courses  were  open  to  the  administration :  one  was  to 
examine  carefully  and  impartially  Kidd's  story,  and  if  it 
were  found  to  be  true  to  acquit  him,  and  they  themselves 
to  assume  the  opprobrium  of  their  ill-advised  and  indecent 


TRIAL  OF  CAPTAIN  KIDD  261 


(though  not  criminal)  speculative  enterprise ;  the  other 
course  was  to  convict  Kidd,  and  then  to  pose  as  the  victims 
of  a  wicked  deceiver,  —  they  seem  to  have  chosen  the  latter 
course. 

Few  persons  can  read  the  accounts  of  the  trials  of  Kidd 
and  of  his  associates  at  the  Old  Bailey,  on  the  8th  and  9th  of 
May,  1701,  without  a  feeling  of  pain  and  disgust.  The  trial 
of  Kidd  for  the  murder  of  William  Moore ;  and  the  trials  of 
Kidd  and  of  half  a  score  of  the  seamen  of  his  crew  on  six 
separate  indictments  for  piracy,  —  all  took  place  within  those 
two  days.  In  a  matter  of  such  supreme  importance,  no 
counsel  was  allowed  to  the  prisoners,  although  Doctor  (in  the 
Civil  Law)  Oldish  and  Mr.  Proctor  Lemnion  stood  ready  in  the 
court  room  to  appear  for  Kidd.  It  had  been  only  a  short  time 
before  when  the  young  Lord  Ashley,  rising  in  Parliament  to 
speak  in  favor  of  the  bill  then  pending,  which  allowed  coun- 
sel to  persons  tried  upon  charges  of  treason,  lost  his  control 
and  was  for  a  short  time  unable  to  proceed ;  then  recover- 
ing himself,  he  said :  "  How  can  I,  Sir,  produce  a  stronger 
argument  in  favour  of  this  bill  than  my  own  failure  ?  My 
fortune,  my  character,  my  life,  are  not  at  stake.  I  am  speak- 
ing to  an  audience  whose  kindness  might  well  inspire  me 
with  courage.  And  yet,  from  mere  nervousness,  from  mere 
want  of  practice  in  addressing  large  assemblies,  I  have  lost 
my  recollection.  I  am  unable  to  go  on  with  my  argument. 
How  helpless  then  must  be  a  poor  man,  who,  never  having 
opened  his  lips  in  public,  is  called  upon  to  reply  without  a 
moment's  preparation  to  the  ablest  and  most  experienced  ad- 
vocates in  the  kingdom,  and  whose  faculties  are  paralysed  by 
the  thought  that,  if  he  fails  to  convince  his  hearers,  he  will 
in  a  few  hours  die  on  the  gallows,  and  leave  beggary  and  in- 
famy to  those  who  are  dearest  to  him !  " 

Lord  Ashley's  speech  had  created  a  great  impression  in 
England  at  the  time,  but  it  does  not  seem  to  have  made 
much  impression  upon  the  judges  of  the  court  which  tried 
William  Kidd.  They  were  less  loud-mouthed,  it  is  true,  than 
their  predecessor,  the  bawling  monster,  Jeffreys,  whose  memory 


262     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


was  still  fresh  and  hideous  among  men,  but  otherwise  his 
mantle  seems  to  have  fallen  upon  worthy  shoulders.  They  give 
the  impression  that  they  were  men  appointed  to  perform  an 
unsavory  piece  of  work,  and  who  had  made  up  their  minds  to 
go  stoutly  through  with  it.  Even  the  understrapper,  clerk  of 
the  arraignments,  was  permitted  to  take  a  hand  in  the  brow- 
beating. A  specimen  extract  or  two  from  the  court  proceed- 
ings may  be  not  without  interest.1  The  prisoners  had  been 
brought  into  court  to  plead  to  the  indictments : 

"  Cl.  Arr.  William  Kidd,  hold  up  thy  hand. 
Kidd.  May  it  please  your  Lordships,  I  desire  you  to  permit  me 
to  have  counsel. 

Recorder  (Sir  Salathiel  Lovell).  What  would  you  have  counsel 
for? 

Kidd.  My  Lord,  I  have  some  matter  of  law  relating  to  the 
indictment,  and  I  desire  I  may  have  counsel  to  speak  to  it. 

Dr.  Oxenden.  What  matter  of  law  can  you  have? 

Cl.  Arr.  How  does  he  know  what  it  is  he  is  charged  with?  I 
have  not  told  him. 

Recorder.  Mr.  Kidd,  do  you  know  what  you  mean  by  matter 
of  law? 

Kidd.  I  know  what  I  mean.  I  desire  to  put  off  my  trial  as 
long  as  I  can,  till  I  can  get  my  evidence  ready. 

Rec.  Mr.  Kidd,  you  had  best  mention  the  matter  of  law  you 
would  insist  on. 


Kidd.  I  desire  your  Lordship's  favor.  I  desire  Dr.  Oldish  and 
Mr.  Lemmon  may  be  heard  as  to  my  case. 

Cl.  Arr.  What  can  he  have  counsel  for  before  he  has 
pleaded?  .  .  . 

Kidd.  I  beg  your  Lordships'  patience  till  I  can  procure  my 
papers.  I  had  a  couple  of  French  passes,  which  I  must  make  use 
of  in  order  to  my  justification. 

1  Kidd  was  undoubtedly,  as  he  mournfully  exclaimed  in  the  court-room, 
"  without  money  and  without  friends."  The  aim  of  the  Tory  opposition  party 
was  to  have  him  convicted  of  piracy,  and  to  fasten  guilty  knowledge  of  his  pir- 
atical designs  upon  the  government,  —  not  at  all  to  have  him  acquitted. 


KIDD  DEPRIVED  OF  COUNSEL  263 


Rec.  That  is  not  matter  of  law.  You  have  had  long  notice  of 
your  trial,  and  might  have  prepared  for  it.  How  long  have  you 
had  notice  of  your  trial? 

Kidd.  A  matter  of  a  fortnight. 

Dr.  Oxenden.  Can  you  tell  the  names  of  any  persons  you 
would  make  use  of  in  your  defence  ? 

Kidd.  I  sent  for  them,  but  I  could  not  have  them. 
Dr.  O.  Where  were  they  then? 

Kidd.  I  brought  them  to  my  Lord  Bellamont  in  New  England. 

Rec.  What  were  their  names?  You  cannot  tell  without  book ? 1 
Mr.  Kidd,  the  court  sees  no  reason  to  put  off  your  trial,  therefore 
you  must  plead.  .  .  . 

Kidd.  I  beg  your  Lordships  I  may  have  counsel  admitted,  and 
that  my  trial  may  be  put  off.    I  am  not  really  prepared  for  it. 

Rec.  Nor  never  will  be,  if  you  can  help  it. 


Kidd.  If  your  Lordships  permit  those  papers  to  be  read,  they 
will  justify  me.    I  desire  my  counsel  may  be  heard.  .  .  . 

Mr.  Coniers.2  We  admit  of  no  counsel  for  him.  .  .  . 

Mr.  Lemmon.  He  ought  to  have  his  papers  delivered  to  him, 
because  they  are  very  material  for  his  defence ;  he  has  endeavored 
to  have  them,  but  could  not  get  them. 

Mr.  Coniers.  You  are  not  to  appear  for  any  one  till  he  pleads, 
and  that  the  court  assigns  you  for  his  counsel." 

So  the  trials  were  hurried  on  then  and  there.  The  wit- 
nesses for  the  prosecution,  two  doubtful  characters  of  the 
crew,  one  of  whom,  as  accidentally  appeared,  had  previously 
stated  that  Captain  Kidd  would  be  able  to  justify  himself  in 
everything  he  had  done,  went  through  their  parrot-like  stories 
on  each  of  the  several  indictments.  Hearsay  evidence, 
opinions,  and  assertions  as  to  Kidd's  motives  and  intentions 

1  Meaning  evidently  his  lists  of  the  crew. 

2  For  the  government.  It  is  well  to  remember  that  in  the  case  of  Captain 
Cuddiford,  who  was  accused  of  piracy  and  tried  at  about  this  time,  the  court 
allowed  him  counsel  without  hesitation.  In  Kidd's  case,  however,  it  is  quite 
probable  that  the  officers  of  the  government  saw  very  clearly  that  counsel  for 
Kidd  would  be  likely  to  ask  many  questions  that  would  prove  embarrassing  for 
the  eminent  partners  of  the  latter. 


264     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


were  all  admitted  in  evidence  without  question,  —  till  Kidd 
asked  one  of  the  witnesses  in  despair :  "  Mr.  Bradinham,  are 
you  not  promised  your  life  to  swear  away  mine?"  The 
cross-examinations  of  these  witnesses  by  the  prisoners  on 
trial  for  their  lives,  ignorant  men,  most  of  whom  prob- 
ably had  never  been  in  a  court-room  before,  would  have 
been  ludicrous,  had  it  not  been  so  pitiable.  The  prisoners 
were  not  allowed  to  testify  in  their  own  behalf,  nor  for  each 
other,  and  had  really  nothing  to  offer  which  could  be  looked 
at  in  the  light  of  a  defence.1  They  were  found  guilty,  almost 
as  a  matter  of  course,  and  then,  when  asked  by  the  court 
what  they  had  to  say,  the  following  remarkable  colloquy 
took  place,  between  Kidd  and  Chief  Baron  Ward,  who  pro- 
nounced the  sentence : 

"  Kidd.  I  have  many  papers  for  my  defence,  if  I  could  have 
had  them. 

L.  C.  B.  Ward.  What  papers  were  they? 
Kidd.  My  French  passes. 
L.  C.  B.  Ward.   Where  are  they? 
Kidd.  My  Lord  Bellamont  had  them. 

L.  C.  B.  Ward.  If  you  had  had  the  French  papers,  you  should 
have  condemned  the  ships. 

Kidd.  I  could  not  because  of  the  mutiny  in  my  ship. 

L.  C.  B.  Ward.  If  you  had  anything  of  disability  upon  you  to 
make  your  defence,  you  should  hare  objected  to  it  at  the  beginning 
of  your  trial.     What  you  mean  by  it  noiv  I  cannot  tell.,> 

So  the  "  trial "  ended.  Captain  Kidd  may  possibly  have 
been  a  pirate,  but  it  was  not  proved  by  these  proceedings  ; 
they  may  perhaps  be  the  subject  of  future  revision  by  a 
higher  tribunal,  —  in  the  words  of  Rudyard  Kipling :  — 

il  When  the  last  grim  joke  is  entered 
In  the  big,  black  Book  of  Jobs." 

1  Kidd  had  three  or  four  naval  officers  present  to  testify  to  his  character.  All 
spoke  well  of  him,  but  this  of  course  had  little  or  no  bearing  upon  the  cases  on 
trial.  As  for  the  killing  of  the  sailor  Moore,  it  may  have  amounted  to  a  grade 
of  manslaughter ;  but  if  the  mutinous  disposition  of  the  men  existed,  as  there  is 
every  reason  to  believe  it  did,  the  matter  would  not  have  been  taken  notice  of 
under  similar  circumstances  on  any  other  vessel  in  the  service. 


EXECUTION  OF  CAPTAIN  KIDD 


265 


Three  da}^s  after  the  trial,  upon  the  12th  of  May,  1701, 
William  Kidd  was  hanged  at  Execution  Dock,  Wapping.1 
His  confiscated  effects,  supposed  to  have  been  mainly  such 
portions  of  the  proceeds  of  the  cargo  of  the  "  Quedagh  "  mer- 
chant as  the  English  government  could  get  into  its  posses- 
sion, and  amounting  to  something  over  £6400,  were  added  to 
the  endowment  of  Greenwich  Hospital,  the  unfinished  towers 
and  quadrangle  of  which  were  probably  some  of  the  last 
objects  which  Captain  Kidd  beheld  as  he  looked  from  the 
scaffold  upon  the  muddy  shores  of  Wapping,  over  the  low 
cottages  of  Rotherhithe,  and  down  the  long  Limehouse  Reach 
of  the  Thames,  crowded  with  vessels  of  all  descriptions. 
There,  within  the  walls  of  that  world-renowned  charity  for 
seamen,  the  British  Admiralty  might,  with  merit,  place  a 
memorial  tablet  to  William  Kidd,  as  to  one  of  the  benefactors 
of  the  hospital,  with  the  simple  inscription,  taken  from  a 
tomb  in  the  great  abbey,  at  the  other  end  of  the  metropolis : 

"  Qualis  erat,  iste  dies  indicabit." 

Kidd's  imaginary  exploits  became  the  fruitful  theme  of  sailors' 
yarns,  and  a  lurid  ballad,  sung  to  the  then  popular  Whig  air 
of  "  Ye  Jacobites  by  name  give  an  ear,  give  an  ear !  "  was 
long  a  favorite  among  them,  its  strains,  sung  in  rather  lively 
measure,  being  often  heard  over  the  water  of  a  summer  night : 

"  I  murdered  William  Moore 

As  I  sailed,  as  I  sailed. 
I  murdered  William  Moore 

As  I  sailed. 
I  murdered  William  Moore, 
And  I  left  him  iu  his  gore, 
Not  many  leagues  from  shore, 

As  I  sailed." 

1  None  of  the  members  of  Kidd's  crew,  who  were  tried  and  condemned  to 
death  with  him,  were  ever  executed,  as  far  as  we  are  informed.  It  was  probably 
never  designed  that  they  should  be.  Statements  have  been  made  by  certain 
writers,  without  giving  their  authority,  that  the  members  of  Kidd's  crew,  who 
were  tried  with  him  were  also  executed,  but  the  records  of  the  trial,  though  men- 
tioning the  carrying  out  of  the  sentence  in  Kidd's  case  are  silent  as  to  the  crew. 


266     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Captain  Kidd's  widow  married,  in  1703,  for  her  fourth  hus- 
band, Christopher  Rousby,  a  man  of  considerable  political 
influence  in  the  colony.  Mrs.  Kidd's  property  in  New  York 
was  confirmed  to  her  by  the  English  government ;  and  she 
and  her  husband  resided  for  a  time  in  the  old  Bowery  mansion 
of  Director  Stuyvesant,  whose  farm  they  had  leased.  Mrs. 
Sarah  Rousby  attained  a  great  age,  much  of  the  latter  part  of 
her  life  being  spent  in  New  Jersey.  Her  will,  bearing  date 
November  1,  1732,  was  proved  some  twelve  years  later,  at 
which  time  she  seems  to  have  left  four  children  surviving 
her. 


CHAPTER  XIX 


SERGEANT  DANIEL  LITSCHO  AND  HIS  TAVERN  — ANDRIES 
JOCHEMSEN.—  THE  "  OUTHOEK."  —  WALL  STREET  AND 
THE  PALISADES  OF  1653.  —  TYMEN  J  AN  SEN,  THE  SHIP 
CARPENTER,  AND  HIS  HOUSE 

I  bade  her  on  her  license  look, 
"  Oh  Sir,"  quoth  she,  "  ye  are  mistook, 
I  have  a  lesson  without  book, 
Most  perfect ; 
If  I  my  license  should  observe, 
And  not  in  any  point  to  swerve, 
Both  I  and  mine,  alas !  should  starve, 
Not  surfeit." 

Ballad  of  "  Robin  Conscience." 

NEXT  in  an  easterly  direction  beyond  the  grounds  of 
Govert  Loockermans,  stood,  upon  the  Shore  Road, 
in  the  year  1655,  a  building  which  appears  to  have  been,  as 
early  as  1645,  in  the  possession  of  Dirck  Volckertsen,  one  of 
the  oldest  settlers  ;  was  subsequently  for  a  time  the  prop- 
erty and  probably  the  residence  of  Govert  Loockermans,  and 
then  became  the  tavern  of  Sergeant  Daniel  Litscho.  As  the 
records  of  Litscho's  transactions  relating  to  his  property  at 
this  place  are  very  imperfect,  we  have  to  glean  our  informa- 
tion largely  from  detached  references  and  other  scraps  of  in- 
formation, supplying  something  from  conjecture.  Daniel 
Litscho  or  Letscho  is  supposed  to  have  been  a  native  of  the 
town  of  Cosslin  in  Pomerania,  near  the  coast  of  the  Baltic 
Sea.1    He  reached  New  Amsterdam  at  an  early  date,  though 

1  The  name  "Leko,"  with  some  slight  variations,  forms  the  appellation  of 
several  villages  near  this  town,  and  the  sergeant's  name  may  have  been  derived 
from  one  of  them,  —  not  an  unusual  ca.se. 


268     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


the  year  is  not  known.  Pomerania  suffered  severely,  about 
the  year  1630,  in  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  as  has  already  been 
noticed  {ante,  page  225),  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  Litscho 
may  have  quitted  his  country  at  that  time.  At  any  rate, 
this  house  upon  the  Shore  Road  was  in  his  occupation  before 
1648,  in  which  year  he  was  one  of  the  twelve  licensed  tavern- 
keepers  of  New  Amsterdam.  His  tavern  seems  to  have  been 
a  good-sized  building,  for  it  is  occasionally  spoken  of  as  "  the 
great  house,"  though  this  is  perhaps  only  in  comparison  with 
a  smaller  one  afterwards  built  to  the  east  of  it.  It  had  at 
least  a  quarter  of  an  acre  of  ground  attached  to  it,  with  a 
frontage  upon  the  river  road  of  some  seventy-five  feet,  and 
back  of  its  garden  were  a  few  apple-trees,1  which  were  called 
its  "orchard,"  and  which  about  the  time  of  our  survey  had 
been  the  subject  of  great  depredations  by  the  vagrant  goats 
of  the  town,  which  were  permitted  to  feed  on  the  vacant  "  out- 
hoek  "  of  the  Jan  Damen  farm,  extending  from  this  point  to 
the  city  "  Wall,"  upon  the  north  line  of  the  present  Wall 
Street.  The  tavern  seems  to  have  stood  a  little  distance  back 
from  the  line  of  the  street,  and  its  site  is  in  good  part  occu- 
pied by  the  present  building  No.  125  Pearl  Street.2 

Sergeant  Daniel  Litscho  no  longer  kept  tavern  here  at  the 
time  of  our  survey  in  1655.  In  the  spring  of  1651,  he  leased 
the  house  to  one  Andries  Jochemsen,  who  kept  a  tavern  or 
ale-house  here  for  many  years,  and  afterwards  acquired  the 
property.  Litscho,  in  a  short  time  after  the  last-mentioned 
date,  appears  to  have  exchanged  his  house  and  land  at  this 
place  with  Claes  Hendricks,  a  carpenter,  for  a  somewhat 
larger  parcel  of  land  owned  by  the  latter,  just  outside  of  the 

1  In  a  deed,  supposed  to  be  of  this  property,  from  Dirck  Volckertsen  to  Govert 
Aersen,  in  1645,  the  vendor  of  the  property  reserves  the  right  "to  remove  six 
apple-trees." 

2  The  property  seems  in  part  to  have  belonged  originally  to  the  tract  granted 
to  Tymen  Jansen,  and  subsequently  to  have  been  controlled  by  Govert  Loocker 
mans.  In  1644,  this  portion  of  the  Tymen  Jansen  patent  was  apparently  re- 
granted  by  the  Director  and  Council  to  Jan  Damen.  Dirck  Volckertsen  was  the 
husband  of  Damen's  step-daughter,  and,  probably  enough,  had  acquired  an  en- 
largement of  his  ground  from  his  father-in-law. 


JOCHEMSEN'S  TAVERN 


269 


gate  of  the  palisades  at  Wall  Street.  There  the  sergeant 
dwelt,  and  probably  kept  a  tavern,  at  the  time  of  our  survey, 
and  for  a  short  period  thereafter,  as  will  be  noticed  in  proper 
order. 

As  for  Andries  Jochemsen,  he  had  the  usual  troubles  of  a 
tavern-keeper  with  the  Dutch  authorities.  He  could  not 
resist  the  temptation  of  occasionally  tapping  on  Sundays  dur- 
ing the  hours  of  preaching,  when  some  of  the  idle  negroes  or 
other  good-for-nothing  vagabonds  of  the  town  found  their 
way  into  his  tavern.  Nor  was  he  always  particular  to  turn 
away  his  customers  at  nine  o'clock  in  the  evening,  as  the 
ordinances  required.  The  schout  often  had  to  pay  disciplinary 
visits  to  Jochemsen's  tavern,  and  these  were  greatly  resented 
by  the  tavern-keeper's  huysvrouw,  insomuch  that  the  officer 
reported  to  the  burgomasters  upon  one  occasion  that  after 
having  noted  down  Andries  "for  the  fine,''  the  wife  of  the 
latter  "called  out  after  him  :  4  Schout,  I  have  something  to  say 
to  thee  ;  hast  thou  any  soul  or  conscience  ?  Dost  thou  expect 
to  go  to  heaven  ? '  —  and  more  such  like  words,  so  that  if  he 
were  as  willing  as  she,  there  would  have  been  a  street  uproar." 
These  pointed  inquiries,  so  disconcerting  to  a  New  York 
official,  even  at  that  early  day,  were  however  denied  by  An- 
dries. His  recollection  was  that  the  remark  made  to  the 
schout  was  merely :  "  Thou  hast  a  conscience,  which  is  not 
worth  much,"  or,  "  which  is  somewhat  large." 

Claes  Hendricksen,  the  carpenter,  seems  to  have  built  a 
house  upon  the  easterly  side  of  the  plot  of  ground  he  had  ac- 
quired from  Sergeant  Litscho,  and  an  earlier  building  doubt- 
less stood  there  also,  for  in  subsequent  transfers  of  the 
premises  they  are  said  to  contain  two  houses,  one  of  which  was 
a  small  one  and  appears  to  have  been  afterwards  removed. 
About  the  time  of  our  survey  these  buildings  passed  through 
several  hands  in  quick  succession,  possibly  under  the  fore- 
closure of  a  mortgage  upon  them.  They  were  held  in  1655 
by  Arent  van  Curler,  and  do  not  seem  to  have  been  regularly 
tenanted.  Finally  they  were  sold  in  1659  to  one  Jan  Lour- 
ensen,  who  resided  here  for  many  years.   At  the  period  of  our 


270     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


survey,  these  were  the  last  houses  along  the  shore  within  the 
town  palisades  at  Wall  Street,  but  within  a  year  or  two  later, 
Sergeant  Litscho,  whose  house  outside  the  gate  had  been  con- 
demned by  the  authorities  as  standing  too  near  the  fortifica- 
tions, returned  to  this  spot,  and  built  upon  some  land  he  had 
recently  purchased  upon  the  Daraen  "  outhoek."  His  house 
joined  immediately  to  that  of  Jan  Lourensen  upon  the  east, 
and  here  he,  and  after  his  death  in  1662  his  wife  Anneken, 
kept  a  tavern  for  a  long  period,  she  being  well  known  in  the 
later  English  times  as  "  Mother  Daniels."  1  This  tavern  was 
a  prominent  one,  and  derived  not  a  little  importance  from  the 
fact  that  it  was  a  sort  of  fire  station  for  the  eastern  part  of  the 
town,  —  a  dozen  fire-buckets  having  been  ordered  in  1659  to 
be  kept  here  for  use  in  cases  of  emergency. 

This,  however,  was  after  the  time  of  our  survey.  In  1655, 
all  the  space  from  Arent  van  Curler's  houses  (or  from  about 
the  present  building,  No.  129  Pearl  Street)  to  the  earthwork 
and  palisades,  which  ran  along  the  northerly  line  of  the 
present  Wall  Street,  —  being  a  distance  of  about  two  hundred 
and  seventy-five  feet,  —  was  waste  ground,  where  goats 
browsed,  and  where  dandelions  starred  the  sod  in  spring,  as 
they  do  now  in  many  a  similar  neglected  spot  in  the  outskirts 
of  the  city. 

The  land  lying  along  the  river  road,  or  the  modern  Pearl 
Street,  and  extending  from  a  short  distance  east  of  the  present 
Hanover  Street  to  Maiden  Lane,  had  been  granted  by  the 

1  Under  the  Dutch  system  of  names,  by  which  her  own  appeared  as  Anneke 
Danielse.  This  lady,  like  many  of  her  neighbors,  had  seen  a  good  deal  of  the 
world.  She  was  the  daughter  of  one  Claas  Croesens,  and  had  in  her  earlier  life 
married  Jan  Jansen  Swaartveger,  who  is  supposed  to  have  been  in  the  military 
service  of  the  West  India  Company.  She  accompanied  her  husband  to  Brazil, 
and  there,  at  the  Castle  of  Rio  Grande,  her  son,  Harmauus  Jansen,  was  born,  about 
the  year  1643.  Her  first  husband  having  died,  we  find  her  about  the  year  1647 
married  to  Sergeant  Litscho,  by  whom  she  had  one  daughter,  Anna.  Her  son 
Harmanus  is  said  in  1662  to  be  living  in  New  Amsterdam,  engaged  in  the  study 
of  medicine  and  surgery.  Her  daughter  Anna  married  William  Bartre  or  Pear- 
tree,  sometimes  spoken  of  as  "  Colonel,"  and  Frances,  the  daughter  of  the  latter, 
who  married  William  Smith,  a  merchant,  was  the  mother  of  William  Peartree 
Smith,  prominent  in  the  Colonial  days  of  New  York. 


THE  OUTHOEK 


271 


Director  and  Council,  at  a  very  early  date,  to  two  or  three  in- 
dividuals, who  had  built  upon  and  otherwise  improved  their 
holdings.  Among  these  proprietors  was  Tymen  Jansen,  master 
ship  carpenter  for  the  West  India  Company,  who  in  1643  re- 
ceived a  grant  for  a  parcel  upon  which  he  must  have  previ- 
ously resided  for  a  number  of  years,  and  which  seems  to  have 
stretched  along  the  river  road,  about  from  the  present  No.  125 
Pearl  Street  to  what  is  now  the  rear  of  the  Seaman's  Savings 
Bank  building  at  the  northwest  corner  of  Pearl  and  Wall 
streets,  —  a  distance  of  about  four  hundred  and  fifty  feet.  In 
depth  this  plot  of  ground  averaged  almost  two  hundred  and 
twenty-five  feet,  so  that  its  area  amounted  to  more  than  two 
acres.  Tymen  Jansen  died  in,  or  soon  after,  the  year  1644 : 
previously,  however,  he  appears  to  have  sold,  or  to  have 
agreed  to  sell  to  Jan  Jansen  Damen,  whose  farm  adjoined  him 
upon  the  west,  the  bulk  of  his  holding,  being  almost  two  acres 
in  area,  and  lying  nearest  the  town  ;  it  was  separated  from  the 
reserved  portion  of  his  plot  by  a  lane  lying  just  north  of  the 
present  Wall  Street ; 1  the  portion  thus  sold  to  Damen  was 
situated  somewhat  southeast  of  Jan  Damen's  farm,  which  it 
touched  at  one  corner,  —  scarcely  more  than  enough  to  afford 
passage  from  one  parcel  of  ground  to  the  other.  This  was 
granted  to  Jan  Damen,  and  from  its  shape  and  situation  be- 
came known  as  the  uouthoek  "  of  his  farm.  When,  in  1653, 
the  palisades  were  constructed  along  what  is  now  the  northern 
line  of  Wall  Street,  this  44  outhoek  "  became  entirely  separated 
from  the  body  of  the  farm ;  and  in  the  spring  of  the  next  year, 
1 654,  the  heirs  of  Jan  Damen  2  sold  this  parcel  of  ground  for 

1  This  lane  led  into  the  ancient  Schaape  Weytie,  or  Sheep  Pasture,  and  by 
various  turnings  appears  to  have  communicated  with  the  Slyck  Steegh,  or  Mill 
Lane.  There  are  indications  that  it  formed  a  very  ancient  road  or  perhaps  wood 
path,  in  use  before  the  road  was  laid  out  along  the  river-bank,  and  which  perhaps 
ran  still  farther  along  the  low  slopes  of  the  upland  into  the  old  lane  forming  the 
present  Gold  Street  (with  which  it  was  in  line),  and  so  into  Van  Tienhoven's  lane 
and  out  to  the  Second  Common  Pasture,  or  present  City  Hall  Park.  That  por- 
tion of  the  lane  more  especially  referred  to  in  the  text  seems  to  have  been  swal- 
lowed up  by  the  ditch  constructed  in  1653  on  the  north  side  of  the  town  palisades. 

2  Strictly  speaking,  the  heirs  of  Jan  Damen's  deceased  wife,  Arientje.  She 
had  acquired  the  property  from  her  husband  by  survivorship,  and  upon  her  death, 
soon  after  his  own,  it  passed  to  her  children  by  a  former  husband. 


272     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


"  a  thousand  pieces  of  green  plank,"  to  Jacob  Flodder,  of  Fort 
Orange,  or  Albany.  Flodder  appears  to  have  bought  the 
ground  for  speculative  purposes ;  and  in  the  summer  of  1656, 
after  some  delay  in  getting  his  deed  for  the  premises,  he  sold 
a  part  of  it,  probably  at  auction,  in  six  parcels,  to  as  many  dif- 
ferent individuals.  These  seem,  in  their  turn,  to  have  bought 
"for  a  rise,"  for,  with  the  exception  of  Daniel  Litscho,  who 
built  upon  his  plot  at  the  westerly  end  of  the  "  outhoek,"  as 
previously  mentioned,  the  rest  of  the  purchasers  appear  to 
have  allowed  their  lots  to  remain  unimproved  for  a  number 
of  years. 

To  the  stroller,  passing  up  Pearl  Street,  it  is  somewhat 
difficult  to  realize,  as  Wall  Street  with  its  hurrying,  jostling 
throng,  opens  before  him,  that  here,  about  two  centuries  and 
a  half  ago,  little  was  to  be  seen  except  a  rather  forlorn  earth- 
work of  sods,  four  or  five  feet  in  height,  above  which  showed 
a  perhaps  equal  height  of  roughly  hewn  and  pointed  "pali- 
sades," formed  of  the  trunks  of  small  trees  six  inches  or 
thereabouts  in  diameter.  At  the  foot  of  the  earthwork  was 
an  open  space  along  which  the  burgher  militia  companies 
occasionally  drilled,  and  sentries  paced  now  and  then  at  periods 
of  alarm,  but  which  at  other  times  lay  solitary  and  waste. 

This  line  of  defence,  occupying  the  northerly  side  of  Wall 
Street,  stretched  (as  originally  laid  out)  straight  across  the 
island,  from  the  East  River  to  the  North  River,  passing  over 
the  site  of  the  present  Trinity  Church.  On  the  further  side, 
lay  its  trench,  "  four  or  five  feet  in  depth,  and  ten  or  eleven 
broad,  somewhat  sloping,"  —  using  the  not  very  precise  lan- 
guage of  the  order  of  its  construction.  This  order  of  the 
Council  bears  date  the  20th  of  April,  1653.  The  details 
of  the  construction  of  this  line  of  defence,  given  by  Mr.  D.  T. 
Valentine,1  evidently  refer  to  merely  preliminary  and  ten- 
tative plans  under  discussion  by  the  Director  and  Council.2 

1  In  Manual  N.  Y.  Com.  Council,  1862,  p.  520. 

2  One  of  these  plans  provided  for  a  curtain  of  planks  four  inches  thick,  instead 
of  the  palisades,  and  these  seem  to  have  been  afterwards  added  or  substituted, 


THE  PALISADES  OF  1653  273 


The  work  was  intended,  of  course,  only  as  a  defence  against 
an  attack  by  land  from  an  enemy  without  artillery,  —  either 
from  the  Indians  or  from  the  New  England  colonists,  with 
the  latter  of  whom  trouble  was  anticipated  about  this  time. 

No  mention  is  made  in  the  original  proceedings,  of  the  con- 
struction of  bastions  along  the  line  of  defence,  but  in  "  The 
Duke's  Plan,"  so  called,  of  the  town  as  it  was  in  the  year 
1661,  we  find  that  five  small  "flat"  bastions,  of  a  semi-ellip- 
tical form,  had  by  that  time  been  constructed  along  the 
works.  These  merely  projected  far  enough  from  the  curtain, 
or  main  line,  to  allow  a  couple  of  guns  to  be  mounted  upon 
each  of  them ;  they  were,  in  all  probability,  constructed  with- 
in a  year  or  two  after  the  original  works,  and  their  positions 
are  quite  closely  defined.  Proceeding  from  the  east  toward 
the  North  River,  the  first  of  these  bastions  was  situated  just 
about  opposite  the  head  of  the  present  Hanover  Street;  the 
second  was  a  few  feet  west  of  the  present  William  Street, 
being  located  about  at  the  spot  where  now  stands  the  en- 
trance to  the  Bank  of  America ;  the  third  occupied  the  south- 
west part  of  the  Sub-Treasury  Building,  at  the  corner  of  Wall 
and  Nassau  streets ;  the  fourth  was  a  few  feet  east  of  Broad- 
way, being  nearly  upon  the  site  of  the  building  No.  4  Wall 
Street ;  and  the  fifth  stood  at  the  rear  of  the  present  Trinity 
Church.  Through  these  defences,  two  narrow  gates  gave  ac- 
cess to  the  town,  —  the  so-called  "  Land  Poort  "  at  the  present 
Broadway,  and  the  "  Water  Poort "  at  the  river  road,  or  pres- 
ent Pearl  Street. 

About  the  period  of  the  surrender  to  the  English,  in  1664, 
several  changes  were  made  in  the  "  fortifications ; "  and  the 
bastions,  which  had  been  somewhat  too  close  together,  were 
demolished,  with  the  exception  of  the  second  and  the  fifth 

and  to  have  been  probably  furnished  upon  contract  by  the  heirs  of  the  Damen 
farm  from  the  "  thousand  pieces  of  green  plank "  for  which  they  sold  the 
"outhoek"  to  Jacob  Flodder,  in  1654,  as  previously  stated  in  the  text.  That  the 
palisades  were  originally  used,  is  shown,  however,  by  a  report  made  to  the  Council 
in  1655  that  "  about  65  of  the  new  palisades  have  been  chopped  down,  and  used 
for  fire-wood,"  —  some  of  the  suburban  residents  evidently  having  possessed  the 
same  traits  in  the  seventeenth  century  as  at  the  present  day. 

18 


274     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


of  those  above  noted,  —  if,  indeed,  the  fifth  was  not  rather 
rebuilt  at  this  time,  at  a  point  nearer  Broadway  than  before. 

In  1673-74,  at  the  time  of  the  recapture  of  the  town  by  the 
Dutch,  Governor  Colve  effected  considerable  further  changes 
in  these  works.  A  general  clearance  of  buildings  and  ob- 
structions in  their  vicinity  took  place,  in  the  course  of  which 
several  interesting  landmarks  were  demolished.  That  portion 
of  the  fortification  west  of  Broadway  was  entirely  rebuilt 
upon  new  lines,  being  turned  to  the  south,  towards  the  pres- 
ent Rector  Street,  in  such  a  manner  as  to  cover  its  exposed 
flank,  in  the  direction  of  the  North  River;  the  site  of  the 
present  Trinity  Church  was  now  left  entirely  outside  of  the 
works. 

The  second  bastion,  above  spoken  of,  near  the  present 
William  Street,  was  now  considerably  enlarged,  and  a  new 
one  was  constructed  just  east  of  Broadway:  these  received 
names,  according  to  the  custom  of  the  Dutch,  and  were 
known  as  "  Hollandia "  and  "  Zeelandia."  The  gate  at 
Broadway  was  closed,  and  a  new  one  was  constructed  at  the 
head  of  Broad  Street,  where  it  was  commanded  by  both  the 
bastions;  the  road  thence  turned  along  the  trench,  and  in 
front  of  the  westerly  bastion  into  Broadway.  A  gate,  or  at 
least  an  opening,  at  Broadway  seems  to  have  been  restored 
within  a  few  years,  in  compliance  with  a  public  demand,  but 
the  gate  at  Broad  Street  appears  to  have  remained  in  use  till 
the  final  destruction  of  the  works  about  the  end  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.1 

An  observer,  standing  at  the  narrow  "  Water  Poort,"  look- 
ing northwards,  in  the  year  1655,  saw  before  him  the  ditch 
of  the  town  u  fortification  ;  "  upon  its  south  bank  the  line  of 
palisades  nine  feet  high,  and  upon  its  north  bank  the  fence 
of  the  Damen  farm,  formed  a  vista  extending  straight  up  the 
hill,  towards  the  North  River.  Over  the  ditch  a  rough  bridge 
was  probably  thrown,  at  the  gate,  and  through  it  ran  a  small 
rill  collected  from  springs  at  the  foot  of  the  hillside  pasture 

1  In  IG74  an  order  of  council  was  made  for  the  construction  of  "a  little 
gate  "  at  Smits  Vly,  for  a  foot  passage. 


TYMEN  JANSEN 


275 


known  as  the  Claaver  Weytie  of  the  Damen  farm.  Over  this 
streamlet,  and  upon  the  east  side  of  the  road  or  present  Pearl 
Street,  a  score  and  more  of  years  after  the  time  of  our  survey, 
the  butchers  of  the  town 1  erected  slaughter-houses,  much  as 
the  poulterers  of  London,  centuries  ago,  built  their  scalding- 
house  over  the  somewhat  similarly  situated  stream  called  the 
Wallbrook.  These  slaughter-houses,  and  the  pens  for  cattle 
which  were  situated  opposite  them,  were  long  conspicuous 
features  in  this  part  of  the  town :  at  the  period  of  our  survey, 
however,  neither  the  slaughter-houses  nor  the  cattle-pens 
existed.  In  place  of  the  latter,  there  stood  near  the  bank  of 
the  trench  of  the  palisades,  and  in  inconveniently  close  prox- 
imity to  the  gate  of  the  town,  the  house  built  more  than 
twenty  years  before,  by  Director-General  Van  Twiller,  for 
Tymen  Jansen,  the  master  ship-carpenter  at  New  Amsterdam 
for  the  West  India  Company. 

Of  Tymen  Jansen's  antecedents  but  little  appears  in  the 
early  records.  He  was  born  about  the  year  1603,  and  came  to 
New  Amsterdam  a  young  man,  for  he  was  in  the  employ  of 
the  Company  before  1633.  He  was  a  busy  man  in  his  occu- 
pation, and  during  Director  Van  Twiller's  term  of  office,  from 
1633  to  1638,  he  is  said,  in  a  report  soon  after  the  latter  date, 
to  have  "  made  many  repairs,  and  built  new  vessels,  with  a 
wood-cutters'  boat,  and  various  farm  boats  and  skiffs,"  so  that 
the  shore  opposite  his  house,  and  near  the  foot  of  the  present 
Wall  Street,  must  have  been  the  scene  of  considerable  activity 
in  these  first  ship-building  operations  of  New  York.  To  the 
house  was  attached  almost  half  an  acre  of  ground.2  The 
building  must  have  stood  very  nearly  upon  the  spot  now  (1901) 
occupied  by  a  stationer's  shop  under  the  Seaman's  Savings 
Bank,  but  projecting  somewhat  out  into  the  present  Pearl 
Street,  the  road  at  this  place  appearing  to  have  originally 
curved  to  the  eastward  a  little  more  than  do  the  lines  of  Pearl 
Street ;  the  straightening,  doubtless,  took  place  at  the  time  of 
building  the  gate  in  the  palisades,  in  1653.    Here  Tymen 

1  Prominent  among  whom  were  Thomas  Robinson  and  James  Burne. 

2  His  original  plot,  as  above  stated,  contained  somewhat  more  than  two  acres. 


276     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Jansen  lived  for  some  ten  or  twelve  years  with  his  wife, 
Marritie,  and  his  little  daughter  Elsie,  of  whose  troubled  life 
in  after  years,  as  the  wife  of  Jacob  Leisler,  mention  has  already 
been  made.1  Jansen  seems  to  have  prospered,  and  in  1642 
and  1643  he  received  grants  of  a  considerable  tract  of  land 
upon  Long  Island,  covering  the  site  of  the  present  court-house 
of  Queens  County  and  its  vicinity,  in  Long  Island  City. 
Whether  he  had  grown  independent  with  years,  and  was 
desirous  of  attending  to  his  own  private  affairs,  or  whether  he 
was  not  in  as  high  favor  with  Director  Kieft  as  with  his  pre- 
decessor, does  not  appear;  but  we  find  that  in  1644  the  Direc- 
tor and  Council  complained  of  him  for  neglecting  to  repair 
the  yachts  "  Amsterdam "  and  "  Prins  Willem,"  to  which 
he  responded,  somewhat  tartly,  that  "  he  has  done  his  best, 
and  cannot  know  when  a  vessel  is  leaky  unless  those  in  charge 
inform  him  of  the  fact;  furthermore,  that  nothing  can  be  done 
without  means."  Jansen,  however,  like  many  other  pioneers 
of  the  colonies  of  America,  was  not  fated  to  attain  old  age ; 
he  died  before  the  year  1646,  and  in  that  year  his  widow  mar- 
ried Dirck  Cornelissen,  of  Wensveen,  a  carpenter  by  trade, 
who  was  probably  the  son  of  Cornelis  Leendertsen,  the  former 
business  associate  of  Govert  Loockermans.2 

Dirck  Cornelissen  dying  in  the  year  1648,  in  the  following 
year  his  widow  married  Govert  Loockermans,  as  previously 
mentioned  (ante,  page  241),  and  removed  to  the  house  of  the 
latter  at  the  present  Hanover  Square.  Some  time  afterwards 
Loockermans  and  his  wife  sold  the  shipwright's  former  house 
to  one  Claes  Hendricksen,  and  he,  in  his  turn,  seems  to  have 
exchanged  the  property,  about  the  beginning  of  1653,  with 
Sergeant  Daniel  Litscho,  for  his  house  and  ground  situated 

1  See  ante,  pages  242,  245. 

2  Dirck  Cornelissen  seems  to  have  been  something  of  a  practical  joker.  In 
1643,  Tomas  Broen,  a  corporal  of  the  garrison,  complained  to  the  Council  that 
while  he  was  on  duty,  Dirck  Cornelissen,  carpenter  (evidently  on  the  score  of 
some  alleged  claim  against  the  West  India  Company),  "  took  off  his  (Broen's) 
hat,  saying  :  '  Thou  art  the  Company's  servant ;  I  '11  pledge  the  hat  for  drink,' 
taking  it  away  with  him,  and  he  hath  nailed  it  on  a  post  in  front  of  his  house, 
putting  a  stone  in  the  hat." 


TYMEN  JANSEN'S  HOUSE 


277 


some  distance  nearer  the  fort.  (See  ante,  page  268.)  The 
sergeant  probably  built  upon  a  portion  of  the  ground  imme- 
diately east  of  the  old  house,  and  about  at  the  rear  of  the 
present  Seaman's  Savings  Bank  building,  and  he  seems  to  have 
kept  his  tavern  here  for  several  years. 

In  the  mean  time,  an  agreement  had  apparently  been  made 
by  Claes  Hendricksen,  for  the  sale  of  the  original  house  to 
Tryntje  Scheerenborg,  the  widow  of  Hendrick  Jansen,  the 
tailor  (whose  difficulties  with  Director  Kieft  have  already 
come  under  our  notice,1  and  who  was  drowned  in  the  wreck  of 
the  u  Princess  "  ) ;  she  had  paid  a  part  of  the  purchase  price, 
but  had  died  without  having  received  any  deed  of  the  prop- 
erty. She  left  two  daughters,  one  of  whom  was  married  to 
Isaac  Kip,  a  young  man,  the  son  of  Hendrick  Kip,  the  tailor ; 
the  other  daughter  was  the  wife  of  Gillis  Pietersen,  from  Gouda, 
who  was  an  old  employe*  of  the  West  India  Company,  having 
been  "  master  house-carpenter  "  for  that  corporation  as  early 
as  1638.  In  the  early  part  of  the  year  1653,  these  parties  had 
been  exceedingly  anxious  to  have  their  deed  of  the  house  pur- 
chased by  their  deceased  mother-in-law  ;  in  fact,  they  brought 
a  suit  against  Claes  Hendricksen  to  compel  him  to  furnish 
them  with  a  deed,  but  the  court  held  that  they  must  look  to 
Sergeant  Litscho  for  that  assurance. 

In  the  mean  time,  the  "  palisades  "  and  the  town  gate  had 
been  built,  in  inconvenient  proximity  to  this  house;  and 
when,  a  short  time  afterwards,  Sergeant  Litscho  offered  a  deed 
to  Kip  and  Pietersen,  and  called  upon  them  for  the  balance  of 
the  purchase-money  remaining  due  upon  the  property,  they 
refused  to  pay  because  of  the  recent  encroachments  by  the 
authorities.  To  appease  them,  the  burgomasters  visited  the 
spot,  and  after  viewing  the  obstructions,  ordered  a  small  guard- 
house, which  had  been  built  outside  the  gate,  to  be  removed. 
The  house  of  Kip  and  Pietersen  remained  for  three  or  four 
years  blocking  up  the  way ;  in  1656  the  burgomasters  were 
obliged  to  serve  upon  them  an  official  notice :  "  Whereas,  the 
fence  of  your  garden  by  the  Town  Gate  is  standing  too  near 

1  See  ante,  page  229. 


278     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


the  Town  Waal,  you  are  therefore  ordered  to  take  in  your 
fence,  so  that  wagons  and  horses  can  conveniently  pass."  1 
Finally,  to  get  rid  of  the  inconvenience  arising  from  the  prox- 
imity of  this  house  to  the  gate,  the  burgomasters  decided  to 
condemn  and  to  demolish  the  building,  which  was  done  in  June, 
1657,  the  owners  being  awarded  five  hundred  and  fifty  guilders, 
or  two  hundred  and  twenty  dollars  for  their  property.  At 
about  the  same  time,  the  adjacent  tavern  of  Sergeant  Litscho 
seems  also  to  have  been  removed,  though  the  records  do  not 
show  the  amount  of  his  award. 

1  This  order  of  the  burgomasters  bears  date  October  7,  1656.  The  "Waal" 
referred  to  is  not  the  line  of  palisades,  but  tbe  protection  to  the  shore,  by  sheet 
piling  or  otherwise.  Mr.  Valentine  has  made  the  mistake  of  constantly  confound- 
ing the  two. 


Plan  of  New  Amsterdam 

from  the  Palisades  to  the  "Ferry 
A.D.  1655 


Compiled  from  the  Dutch 
English  Records  by 
.7.  //.  INNES 


P  <?  Q  <P 
?  <?  Q-V 
p  9  9  C 

9  <?  Q  9 

9  P  O  < 
P  ^  p.  < 

i 


7/ 


CHAPTER  XX 


THE  SMITS  VLY.  —  HENDRICK  J  AN  SEN'S  GRANT.  — AUGUS- 
TYN  HEERMANS  AND  HIS  HOUSE.  —  MARYN  ADRIAENSEN 
AND  HIS  ATTACK  ON  DIRECTOR  KIEFT 

PROCEEDING  outwards  from  the  town,  we  have  now 
reached  the  district  long  known  as  the  Smits  Vly. 
This  was  a  tract  of  low-lying  land  between  the  river  shore 
and  the  foot  of  the  hills  forming  the  body  of  the  island;  it 
stretched  along  the  river  from  near  Wall  Street  about  to  the 
present  Beekman  Street,  a  distance  of  a  quarter  of  a  mile, 
and  varied  in  width  from  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  to  two 
hundred  and  fifty  feet.  Though  doubtless  full  of  springs,  it 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  sufficiently  wet  to  deter  improve- 
ment, for  portions  of  it  were  built  upon  at  a  very  early  date. 
The  term  "vly,"  as  used  in  this  connection,  does  not  exactly 
correspond  either  with  the  English  "valley,"  or  "meadow;" 
the  Dutch  appellation  would  be  perhaps  more  accurately 
rendered  as  "the  Smith's  Flats."  As  to  the  origin  of  the 
name,  nothing  is  accurately  known.  Mr.  D.  T.  Valentine, 
and  a  host  of  others  following  him,  have  stated  that  the  place 
received  its  name  from  Cornells  Clopper,  a  blacksmith  who 
in  1660  acquired  a  parcel  of  ground  at  the  northwest  corner 
of  Maiden  Lane  and  Pearl  Street;  but  a  more  careful  exam- 
ination would  have  shown  them  that  the  locality  is  spoken  of 
by  the  same  name  nearly  twenty  years  before  that  date,  —  as 
early  as  1641. 

The  land  along  the  East  River,  from  Tymen  Jansen's 
garden,  as  far  as  Maiden  Lane,  seems  to  have  been  originally 
acquired  by  Hendrick  Jansen,  the  tailor,  Director-General 


280     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Kieft's  antagonist.1  He  was  certainly  located  there  as  early 
as  1639,  and  had  apparently  about  two  acres  of  ground  under 
cultivation.  His  house,  according  to  the  results  of  a  careful 
collation  of  many  deeds  and  other  historical  material,  seems 
to  have  stood  very  near  Maagde  Paetje,  or  Maiden  Lane, 
and  to  have  occupied  in  part  the  site  of  the  present  building, 
No.  195  Pearl  Street.  In  the  Seutter  View  (so-called)  of 
New  Amsterdam,  or  New  York,  and  in  two  or  three  others 
which  are  substantially  the  same  view,  though  bearing  dif- 
ferent names,  we  have  a  representation,  as  of  about  the  year 
1667,  of  the  buildings  along  the  East  River  shore,  from  the 
present  Wall  Street  to  Maiden  Lane.  These  buildings  were 
isolated,  and  plainly  in  the  sight  of  the  draughtsman,  and 
are  not  open  to  the  same  imputations  of  inaccuracy  as  are 
several  other  portions  of  these  views.  From  the  views,  the 
Hendrick  J ansen  house  appears  to  have  been  a  small  building 
of  the  usual  Dutch  farmhouse  type.  Like  most  of  such 
buildings,  outside  of  the  more  thickly  settled  districts,  it 
stood  with  its  broadside  to  the  street,  towards  which  its 
thatched  roof  sloped.2 

In  August,  1641,  Jansen  sold  a  part  of  his  property  here, 
being  his  "house,  barn,  barrack,  and  arable  land,"  for  2500 
guilders,  or  about  $1000,  to  a  man  who  afterwards  took  a 
prominent  though  brief  part  in  the  history  of  the  Colony,  — 
Maryn  Adriaensen.  Upon  the  premises  there  seems  to  have 
been  the  quite  common  appurtenance  of  a  small  brew-house, 
and  this,  with  its  apparatus,  Jansen  retained,  agreeing  to 
remove  the  same,  —  which  he  probably  did  to  the  western 
portion  of  his  original  plot,  where  he  seems  to  have  built  a 
new  house  for  himself;  but  this,  too,  in  November,  1642,  he 
sold  to  one  Willem  Adriaensen,  describing  the  property  then 
as  his  "garden,  dwelling,  and  brew-house." 

1  See  ante,  page  229,  etc. 

2  Just  adjoining  this  house,  at  the  corner  of  Maiden  Lane,  there  stood,  as 
shown  upon  the  view,  another  huilding  with  its  gable  end  towards  Pearl  Street. 
This  was  a  house  which  had  been  very  recently  built,  upon  a  narrow  lot  running 
along  the  side  of  Maiden  Lane ;  the  lot  had  been  acquired  in  1666  by  Pieter 
Jansen,  a  ship  carpenter.  At  the  time  of  our  survey,  however,  this  space  was 
not  occupied  by  any  building. 


AUGUSTYN  HEERMANS 


281 


Upon  this  latter  sale,  which  was  for  an  equal  consideration 
with  that  of  the  former  parcel,  —  namely,  2500  Carolus  guil- 
ders, —  it  was  stipulated  with  great  care  "  that  2-1  guilders  for 
drink  on  the  bargain  shall  be  contributed  by  the  seller  alone 
without  charging  any  part  to  the  purchasers. "  This  appro- 
priation of  24  guilders,  or  nearly  $10,  for  "drink  on  the 
bargain,"  —  being  about  one  per  cent  on  the  purchase  price 
of  the  property,  —  shows  that  the  sale  of  a  piece  of  New 
Amsterdam  real  estate  was  considered,  in  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  to  be  an  occasion  of  great  dignity  and 
importance. 

Of  Willem  Adriaensen,  the  purchaser  of  this  property,  we 
have  but  little  information ;  he  is  said  to  have  been  a  cooper 
by  trade,  and  to  have  had  lands  upon  Long  Island.  When, 
or  in  what  manner  he  parted  with  his  property  here  in  the 
Smits  Vly  we  do  not  know ;  but  within  six  or  seven  years 
after  Willem  Adriaensen's  purchase,  we  find  the  premises  in 
the  possession  of  one  of  the  most  interesting  characters  of 
New  Amsterdam,  —  of  Augustyn  Heermans,  soldier,  scholar, 
artist,  merchant,  land-surveyor,  speculator,  and  manorial 
proprietor.1  Heermans  was  a  native  of  Bohemia,  and  was 
born  about  the  year  1608,  in  the  city  of  Prague,  where  his 
father,  Ephraim  Augustyn  Heermans,  was  one  of  the  members 
of  the  city  council.  In  the  old  Bohemian  capital,  surrounded 
by  vine-clad  hills,  life  passed  uneventfully  enough,  no  doubt, 
for  the  young  Augustyn,  till  he  was  about  ten  years  of  age, 
—  then,  the  memorable  year  1618  came  on,  and  during  the 
next  fifteen  years  he  must  have  witnessed  many  of  the  most 
stirring  events  of  the  great  epoch  known  as  the  Thirty  Years' 
War,  of  which  Prague  was  the  very  cradle.  As  a  bright, 
adventure -loving  boy,  he  must  have  gazed  with  a  lively 
curiosity  upon  the  historic  window  in  the  old  palace  of 
Prague,  from  which,  in  the  year  named,  the  German  Em- 

1  Many  interesting  facts  respecting  Augustyn  Heermans  have  been  brought 
out  recently  in  a  paper,  written  for  the  Maryland  Historical  Society  by  General 
James  G.  Wilson,  upon  Heermans'  "  Manor  of  Bohemia,"  in  Maryland.  From  it 
several  of  the  particulars  given  in  the  text  are  drawn. 


282     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


peror's  commissioners  and  their  secretary  were  thrown  into 
the  castle-trench  by  the  enraged  Protestant  deputies  of  the 
estates  of  Bohemia,  and  upon  the  heap  of  litter  which  won- 
derfully enabled  them  to  escape  death  in  their  eighty  feet 
fall.  Soon  afterwards  he  must  have  seen  the  streets  of  the 
capital  filled  with  troops  from  all  parts  of  Bohemia,  now 
urged  irrevocably  into  rebellion  against  their  Austrian, 
Roman  Catholic  ruler  Matthias,  the  head  of  the  German 
Empire;  a  little  later,  perhaps,  he  may  have  watched  them 
march  through  the  Horse  Market  and  Gate,  and  into  the 
Vienna  Road,  under  their  bold  leader,  Count  Thurn,  to 
besiege  the  emperor  in  his  capital  itself. 

So,  too,  he  must  have  seen  Prague  ablaze  with  enthusiasm 
and  with  gayety  over  the  coronation  of  the  king  whom  the 
Bohemian  estates  had  chosen,  Frederic,  Count  Palatine  of 
the  Rhine,  and  of  his  queen,  the  beautiful  Princess  Elizabeth 
of  England.  Then  came  a  change ;  on  the  afternoon  of  the 
8th  of  November,  1620,  all  Prague  was  shaken  by  the 
thunder  of  the  cannon  from  the  White  Mountain,  three 
miles  west  of  the  city,  where  eighty  thousand  men  were 
engaged  in  combat.  Among  the  spectators  who  crowded 
the  house-tops  and  the  walls,  may  well  have  been  the  young 
Heermans,  who  from  thence  could  have  seen  the  Bohemian 
army  melt  away,  in  the  course  of  an  hour  or  so,  before  the 
troops  of  the  emperor,  leaving  the  mountain-sides  and  plateau 
black  with  the  bodies  of  more  than  four  thousand  slain. 

Dark  days  followed  in  Prague;  the  short-reigned  king, 
Frederic,  and  his  household  fled  by  night;  the  city  was  sur- 
rendered to  the  emperor  without  opposition;  a  few  months 
of  inaction  were  allowed  to  supervene,  in  order  to  draw  back 
to  Prague  the  escaped  Protestant  leaders ;  then  the  net  was 
sprung,  and  the  boy  Heermans  could  hear  the  death-bell 
tolling  daily  for  executions  of  the  condemned  rebels ;  while 
the  famous  Karlsbriicke  over  the  Moldau,  so  captivating  to 
a  boy  of  twelve  or  thirteen,  where  the  river  lay  with  its  lake- 
like waters  and  green,  willowed  islands,  was  now  a  place 
to  be  shunned,  —  for  above  it  was  fixed  a  long  row  of  the 


Augustine  Heermaxs. 
From  the  portrait  by  himself  on  his  :<  Map  of  Maryland,"  British  Museum. 


COUNT  WALLENSTEIN 


283 


mouldering  heads  of  the  principal  men  of  Prague  and  of 
Bohemia.  If  Augustyn  Heermans'  family  did  not  itself 
suffer  at  this  time,  it  must  have  been  fortunate,  for  it 
belonged  undoubtedly  to  the  Protestant  faction,  which  had 
been  previously  strong  in  Prague.  However  this  may  have 
been,  the  victorious  Romanist  party  carried  matters  with  a 
hard  hand,  and  times  grew  worse  and  worse  for  the  van- 
quished Protestants,  till  in  1627  they  were  given  the  last 
alternative  of  either  abandoning  their  religion  or  their 
country. 

During  these  gloomy  times,  young  Augustyn  Heermans, 
now  growing  up  to  manhood,  must  have  often  seen  in  the 
streets  of  Prague  a  tall,  thin  man  with  stubby  red  hair  and 
small  sparkling  eyes,  and  with  a  stern  and  somewhat  ab- 
stracted air,  for  whom  people  already  made  way  with  a 
respectful  awe.  This  person  was  Count  Albert  von  Wal- 
lenstein,1  known  then  as  a  man  of  consummate  military 
abilities,  who  was  high  in  favor  with  the  Emperor,  and  who 
had  been  enriched  with  scores  of  the  confiscated  estates  of 
the  Bohemian  nobles.  His  princely  ostentation,  leadership 
of  huge  armies,  and  his  vast  and  obscure  designs,  which 
alarmed  the  German  court,  and  which  led  alike  to  Wallen- 
stein's  tragical  end  and  to  his  enshrinement  in  Romance  and 
in  Poetry,  were  yet  in  the  future. 

It  was  about  in  the  year  1625  that  Wallenstein  disclosed 
his  design  of  forming  a  great  army  for  the  service  of  the 
harassed  emperor,  whose  rebellious  Protestant  states  were 
now  assisted  by  various  foreign  countries;  this  army  was 
to  be  raised  and  partly  maintained  at  Wallenstein's  own 
expense,  but  principally  by  exactions  upon  the  Protestant 
territories.  The  plan  was  soon  afterwards  carried  into  effect; 
and  among  those  who  entered  the  service  of  the  great  leader 
was  Augustyn  Heermans.  Whether  necessity  led  to  his  thus 
entering  a  service  which  in  some  respects  is  not  likely  to 
have  been  congenial  to  him  we  cannot  tell.    He  is  said  to 

1  More  strictly  Waldstein  ;  the  other  appellation  has  been  appropriated,  how- 
ever, by  history  and  by  poetry. 


284     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


have  served  in  Wallenstein's  army  through  several  cam- 
paigns, and  was  present  at  that  general's  defeat  by  the 
Swedes,  in  November,  1632,  at  the  battle  of  Lutzen,  in 
which  the  head  of  the  Protestant  cause,  the  great  Gustavus 
Adolphus,  King  of  Sweden,  lost  his  life. 

It  was  perhaps  during  the  temporary  breaking  up  of 
Wallenstein's  army  after  the  battle  of  Lutzen,  that  Heer- 
mans  found  an  opportunity  of  leaving  the  service  and  of 
coming  to  America.  He  is  said  to  have  come  over  as  the 
clerk,  or  agent  of  the  firm  of  Gabry  and  Sons,  merchants  at 
Amsterdam,1  and  was  certainly  for  many  years  their  factor 
at  New  Amsterdam.  Though  he  had  grown  up  in  a  dis- 
tracted period,  he  seems  to  have  been  a  man  of  considerable 
attainments,  and  is  said,  in  addition  to  his  own  Bohemian,  to 
have  had  some  acquaintance  with  the  Latin,  German,  Eng- 
lish, Dutch,  French,  and  Spanish  languages,  —  one  or  two 
of  these,  indeed,  he  may  have  picked  up  in  Wallenstein's 
polyglot  army. 

Soon  after  Heermans'  arrival  in  New  Netherland,  and  in 
the  course  of  the  year  1633,  he  seems  to  have  been  despatched 
to  the  Dutch  settlements  on  the  South,  or  Delaware  River, 
and  while  there  he  was  present  and  a  witness,  at  the  purchase 
by  one  Arent  Coersen  from  the  Indians  of  a  tract  of  land  near 
the  mouth  of  the  Schuylkill  River,  which  land  is  supposed  to 
have  extended  very  near  to,  if  it  did  not  actually  include,  the 
site  of  the  present  city  of  Philadelphia.  Augustyn  Heermans 
now,  for  a  number  of  years,  appears  to  have  remained  quietly 
at  New  Amsterdam,  attending  to  the  mercantile  concerns  of 
his  principals.  Probably  before  the  year  1651  he  had  built 
a  large  brick  storehouse  upon  Pearl  Street  between  the  old 
church  and  the  fort.  This,  in  its  day,  was  one  of  the  most 
substantial  buildings  in  the  town ; 2  it  occupied  a  site,  upon 
which  there  is  reason  to  believe  had  previously  stood,  for  a 
number  of  years,  a  smaller  storehouse  of  the  Gabrys ;  and  the 

1  See  additional  particulars  respecting  Heermans,  ante,  page  53,  etc. 

2  Its  value  was  appraised  in  1653  as  8500  guilders,  or  3400  dollars  of  the 
present  currency. 


HEERMANS  AT  NEW  AMSTERDAM 


285 


larger  building  appears  to  have  been  only  held  in  trust  for 
that  firm  by  Heermans.  A  short  time  before  this  period, 
or  about  in  the  year  1647,  Heermans  had  acquired  a  plot  of 
something  over  an  acre  of  ground,  lying  just  north  of  Burger 
Jorissen's  land  in  Hanover  Square;  it  was  an  interior  parcel, 
to  which  access  was  had  through  the  narrow  lane  called  the 
"Slyck  Steegh,"  previously  described.1  It  was  leased  and 
used  for  garden  purposes  for  many  years  by  Allard  Anthony, 
but  after  the  opening  of  Smith  (or  the  present  William) 
Street,  which  intersected  it,  it  was  sold  off  in  lots  by  Heer- 
mans about  the  year  1660. 

In  the  mean  time,  prior  to  1649,  Heermans  had  become 
possessed  in  some  uncertain  way,  as  above  stated,  of  the 
western  portion  of  the  land  of  Hendrick  Jansen,  the  tailor, 
in  the  Smits  Vly,  and  of  the  house  built  by  the  latter  thereon, 
about  the  years  1641-42,  and  which  he  had  sold  to  Willem 
Adriaensen.  This  property  contained  about  two  hundred  feet 
frontage  along  the  river,  and  was  something  over  that  dis- 
tance in  depth,  so  that  it  comprised  about  an  acre  of  ground ; 
its  rear  portion  was  occupied  by  the  orchard  which  Hendrick 
Jansen  had  planted,  which  extended  back  as  far  as  the  slopes 
of  Jan  Damen's  hillside  pasture,  known  as  the  Claaver 
Weytie,  or  the  Clover  Field.2 

Not  being  a  man  of  family  at  this  time,  it  is  possible  that 
Heermans  did  not  as  yet  occupy  the  place  in  Smits  Vly 
himself,  though,  like  many  others  in  the  settlement,  he  may 
have  had  a  slave  establishment.3  Heermans  was,  in  fact,  a 
man  of  more  than  forty  years  of  age  when,  in  December, 
1650,  he  married  Janneken  Verlett,  of  Utrecht  in  the  Nether- 
lands ;  she  is  supposed  to  have  been  the  daughter  of  Nicolaes 

1  See  ante,  page  152. 

2  The  Claaver  Weytie  extended  about  to  the  present  William  Street 
westerly.  As  for  the  land  of  Heermans  here,  it  was  bisected  by  the  present 
Pine  (then  called  Tienhoven  or  King's  Street)  many  years  after  our  survey,  — 
about  in  the  year  1689. 

8  A  well-known  negro  about  the  town  known  as  Jan  Augustinus,  or  "  Augus- 
tyn's  John,"  may  quite  possibly  have  been  a  freedman  of  Augustyn  Heermans. 


286     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Verlett,  a  widower,  who  afterwards  married  Madame  Anna 
Bayard,  Director  Stuyvesant's  widowed  sister. 

After  his  marriage,  Augustyn  Heermans'  residence  was 
undoubtedly  at  the  house  in  the  Smits  Vly;  in  the  course 
of  the  next  few  years  he  seems  to  have  built  a  larger  house 
upon  the  west  side  of  the  original  one;  and  the  two  build- 
ings  are  shown,  standing  gable  end  to  the  road  in  the  Seutter 
View;  they  would  appear  to  have  stood  a  short  distance 
back  from  the  highway.  What  Heermans  calls  his  "great 
house  "  must  have  occupied  a  good  portion  of  the  site  of  the 
present  warehouse,  No.  175  Pearl  Street,  while  the  older 
structure  stood  partly  upon  the  site  of  the  building,  No.  177, 
and  partly  upon  that  of  No.  179. 

Here  Augustyn  Heermans  spent  the  last  ten  or  twelve 
years  of  his  residence  in  New  Amsterdam.  Fronted  by  the 
shingly  beach  of  the  East  River,  and  backed  by  its  orchard 
and  the  hillside,  the  place  was  a  quiet  haven  where  its  pro- 
prietor often,  no  doubt,  found  opportunities  to  contrast  the 
prevailing  calm  with  the  turbulent  experiences  of  his  early 
life.  All  traces  of  the  locality  as  it  was  in  Heermans'  day 
have  long  passed  away,  however;  and  he  must  live  largely  in 
imagination  who  can  find  in  the  dark  street  and  melancholy 
warehouses,  and  clattering  trains  of  the  elevated  railway 
overhead,  anything  to  remind  him  that  here  Augustyn  Heer- 
mans, awakened  on  a  summer  morning  by  the  carolling  of 
the  robins  in  his  orchard,  could  look  from  his  windows  upon 
the  early  mist  covering  the  East  River,  and  call  to  mind, 
perhaps,  a  foggy  morning,  a  quarter  of  a  century  before, 
when  he  with  twenty  thousand  of  his  comrades  stood  under 
arms,  and  through  the  mists  which  covered  the  village  and 
plain  of  Lutzen,  on  the  day  of  the  great  battle,  heard  the 
Saxon  troops  of  Gustavus  Adolphus  singing:  — 

"  Ein  feste  Burg  ist  unser  Gott, 
Ein  gute  Welir  und  Waffen." 

Augustyn  Heermans'  political  experiences  in  New  Amster- 
dam were  not,  however,  entirely  tranquil.    In  1649  he  had 


HEERMANS  AND  TIENHOVEN  287 


joined  in  the  opposition  to  the  colonial  policy  of  the  West 
India  Company;  and  as  one  of  "the  Nine  Men,"  so-called, 
his  name  headed  the  signers  of  the  historic  document  known 
as  the  "  Vertoogh,"  or  " Remonstrance,"  to  the  States-Gen- 
eral, prepared  by  Adriaen  van  der  Donck  in  that  year.  In  this 
paper,  Stuyvesant  and  his  secretary,  Van  Tienhoven,  were 
handled  without  gloves,  and  its  signers  had  plenty  of  trouble 
to  look  for  from  their  malicious  adversaries  in  the  colonial 
government;  most  of  them  got  it,  too,  and  Heermans  was 
placed  under  arrest  by  the  Director-General  for  refusing  to 
produce  documents  which  had  circulated  amongst  him  and 
his  associates.  Between  Heermans  and  Van  Tienhoven,  too, 
there  was  but  little  love  lost:  "That  infernal  swaggerer 
Tienhoven,"  Heermans  writes,  in  September,  1651,  to 
Adriaen  van  der  Donck,  "has  returned  here,  and  put  the 
country  in  a  blaze."  Van  Tienhoven,  as  there  is  every 
reason  to  believe,  had  also  lighted  a  small  private  fire  of  his 
own  against  Augustyn  Heermans,  for  he  had  scarcely 
returned  from  the  Netherlands,  when  the  merchants  John 
and  Charles  Gabry  at  Amsterdam  presented  a  petition  to 
the  States-General,  praying  that  Augustyn  Heermans,  their 
factor  at  New  Amsterdam,  might  be  ordered  to  render  to 
them  an  account  of  his  transactions  there.  Van  Tienhoven's 
insinuations,  however,  if  such  there  had  been,  do  not  seem 
to  have  produced  any  very  permanent  effect,  for  we  find  that 
the  connection  between  the  Gabrys  and  their  factor  continued 
apparently  for  many  years  longer. 

About  this  same  time,  too,  in  the  year  1652,  Heermans 
appears  to  have  been  made  the  victim  of  a  despicable  trick 
in  which  the  Secretary's  hand  is  more  apparent.  Heermans, 
and  a  companion,  being  upon  the  point  of  making  a  journey 
to  New  England,  in  the  spring  of  that  year,  were,  it  seems, 
approached  by  George  Baxter,  ensign  of  the  garrison,  who 
gave  them  a  letter  to  be  delivered  to  Governor  William 
Coddington,  of  Rhode  Island.  This  letter,  apparently  by 
some  prearrangement,  was  taken  from  the  travellers  in 
Rhode  Island,  and  was  opened  before  the  General  Court,  or 


288     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Assembly,  when  it  was  found  to  contain  an  offer  purporting 
to  come  from  Director-General  Stuyvesant,  to  send  Governor 
Coddington  some  soldiers  to  be  employed  against  the  inhab- 
itants of  Rhode  Island.  The  irritated  Rhode  Islanders 
immediately  placed  Heermans  and  his  companion  under 
arrest  for  a  treasonable  conspiracy  against  their  government. 
They  were  held  to  bail  in  the  sum  of  100  pounds  sterling  till 
they  should  prove  their  innocence ;  and  it  was  only  with  the 
greatest  difficulty  that  they  succeeded  in  procuring  a  certifi- 
cate from  the  Council  at  New  Amsterdam  of  their  ignorance 
of  the  contents  of  the  letter. 

The  difficulties  between  Heermans  and  the  colonial  ad- 
ministration seem  to  have  been  smoothed  over,  for  a  time 
at  least,  and  in  1659  we  find  Director-General  Stuyvesant 
sending  Heermans  and  one  Resolved  Waldron,  as  a  deputa- 
tion to  visit  the  Governor  of  Maryland,  in  order  to  establish, 
if  possible,  an  agreement  respecting  the  boundaries  of  that 
colony,  and  those  of  the  Dutch  settlements  along  the  Dela- 
ware; the  appointment  may,  indeed,  have  been  somewhat 
ungraciously  given  by  the  Director-General,  and  may  have 
been  largely  owing  to  the  fact  that  Heermans'  linguistic  and 
general  business  talents,  together  with  an  acquaintance  with 
the  science  of  land-surveying  which  he  possessed,  rendered 
him  perhaps  the  most  fit  person  in  the  Colony  for  this 
business.1 

1  As  Heermans  must  have  been  quite  young  when  he  entered  the  military 
service  of  Wallenstein,  and  as  there  seems  to  be  no  reason  for  supposing  that  he 
was  engaged  in  the  pursuit  of  land-surveying  at  any  time  in  New  Netherland, 
there  is  perhaps  reason  to  conjecture  that  he  may  have  been  attached  to  the 
engineer  corps  of  Wallenstein's  army.  That  he  possessed  some  artistic  talents, 
and  that  he  was  the  draughtsman  of  the  valuable  view  of  New  Amsterdam,  of 
about  the  year  1651  or  1652,  which  has  been  already  spoken  of  as  the  "  Visscher 
View,"  and  which  in  a  less  finished  form  is  to  be  found  in  the  second  edition  of 
his  friend  Adriaen  van  der  Donck's  "  Beschrijving  van  Nieuw  Nederland,"  is 
reasonably  well  known.  It  is  a  curious  fact  in  this  connection  that  Wenceslas 
Hollar,  the  great  artist  and  topographical  illustrator  of  London,  whose  sketches 
are  now  of  such  value,  and  who  was  a  contemporary  of  Augustyn  Heermans, 
was  likewise  a  native  of  Prague  in  Bohemia,  and,  like  Heermans,  he  seems  to 
have  always  retained  much  pride  in  the  place  of  his  nativity.  In  his  views  of 
"  London  before  and  after  the  Great  Fire  "of  1666,  in  the  writer's  possession, 


HEERMANS'  SURVEY  OF  MARYLAND  289 


Heermans'  journal  of  this  expedition  is  still  extant,1  and 
describes  with  considerable  minuteness  the  progress  of  the 
commissioners  with  their  party  of  soldiers  and  guides.  They 
travelled  on  foot  and  by  canoe  through  the  forests  for  several 
days,  and  at  Patuxent,  in  the  Maryland  district,  they  had  an 
interview  of  several  days  with  Governor  Fendall,  of  the 
Colony,  and  with  Philip  Calvert,  son  of  Lord  Baltimore,  the 
proprietor,  who  was  then  Secretary  of  the  province,  and  who 
afterwards  succeeded  his  father  in  the  title  and  in  the  pro- 
prietorship of* the  Colony.  From  this  point  Heermans  sailed 
down  the  Chesapeake  Bay,  and  had  an  interview  with  the 
Governor  of  Virginia,  and  upon  his  return  from  the  latter 
province  he  again  stopped  for  a  season  in  Maryland.  In  his 
journey  through  the  forests  between  the  Delaware  and  the 
Susquehanna  rivers,  he  had  received  a  favorable  impression 
of  the  country;  and  now  learning  that  the  proprietor  of 
Maryland  was  laboring  under  many  disadvantages  from  the 
want  of  an  accurate  map  of  his  territories,  Heermans  placed 
himself  in  communication  with  Lord  Baltimore,  offering  to 
make  a  survey  and  map  of  the  entire  province,  in  considera- 
tion of  a  manorial  grant  to  himself.  This  proposition  was 
accepted  by  Lord  Baltimore,  and  Heermans  soon  entered 
upon  the  work  of  his  survey,  which  occupied  him  for  about 
ten  years.2  For  this  work  he  received  a  grant  of  about  thirty 
thousand  acres  in  the  present  Cecil  County,  Maryland,  and 
in  its  vicinity.  To  this  tract,  part  of  which  he  named  the 
"Manor  of  Nova  Bohemia,"  he  appears  to  have  removed  his 
household  from  New  Amsterdam  about  the  year  1662,  in 
which  year,  on  the  19th  of  June,  he  received  his  first  patent 
from  Lord  Baltimore.3    Here,  upon  a  stream  which  he  called 

these  sketches,  wonderful  in  their  mastery  of  topographical  details,  and  executed 
at  a  period  when  for  twenty  years  of  his  life  the  artist  had  been  engaged  upou 
English  subjects,  appear  as  of  "  W.  Hollar,  of  Prague,  Bohemia." 

1  See  same  in  Vol.  II.,  N.  Y.  Colonial  Documents. 

2  His  large  map  of  Maryland  was  published  by  Faithorne  at  London,  about 
1670;  a  copy  is  preserved  in  the  British  Museum.  It  is  spoken  of  in  the  highest 
terms  by  contemporaries. 

3  General  Wilson,  in  his  historical  sketch,  says  that  Heermans  removed  from 

19 


290     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


the  Bohemia  River,  near  the  head  of  Chesapeake  Bay,  Heer- 
mans  erected  his  manor  house,  and  here  for  many  years  he 
continued  to  reside  upon  his  estate  with  considerable  dignity. 
"  He  was  the  most  important  personage  in  that  part  of  the 
Colony,"  says  General  Wilson,  in  the  paper  to  which  refer- 
ence has  been  made,  "driving  in  his  coach  and  four,  with 
liveried  servants;  and  with  a  large  deer  park,  the  walls  of 
which  are  still  (1889)  standing.  His  estate  abounded  in 
game,  and  both  he  and  his  sons  were  fond  of  shooting  and  of 
fox-hunting."  He  and  all  his  family  were  naturalized  as 
English  subjects  about  1666,  and  from  time  to  time  during 
the  remainder  of  his  life  he  was  engaged  in  considerable 
public  business,  and  is  said  to  have  held  correspondence  with 
many  of  the  most  conspicuous  men  of  that  period  of  colonial 
history. 

Heermans  died  in  1686:  "his  monumental  stone,"  says 
General  Wilson,  "  is  still  to  be  seen  on  his  manor.  ...  It 
contains  the  following  inscription :  — 

AUGUSTINE  HERMAN,  BOHEMIAN, 
THE  FIRST  FOUNDER  & 
SEATER  OF  BOHEMIA  MANOR 
ANNO  1661." 

The  name  became  extinct  in  1739,  but  it  is  understood  that 
the  female  line  still  continues.  The  old  Bohemia  Manor 
House  was  burned  in  1815,  and  with  it  are  said  to  have  been 
destroyed  many  valuable  paintings,  documents,  and  historical 
mementos. 

Prior  to  his  removal  to  Maryland,  Augustyn  Heermans 
had  acquired  interests  in  several  tracts  of  considerable  size 
on  Manhattan  Island,  but  these  he  gradually  disposed  of  to 
different  purchasers.    His  former  residence  in  the  Smits  Vly 

New  Amsterdam  in  1661.  It  will  be  found,  however,  that  his  youngest  daughter, 
Franciua,  was  baptized  in  the  Dutch  Church  at  New  Amsterdam,  on  the  12th 
of  March,  1662.  The  dates  of  baptism  of  his  other  children  were  as  follows: 
Ephraim  Georgius,  September  1,  1652;  Casparus,  January  2,  1656;  Anna 
Margareta,  March  10,  1653  ;  and  Judith,  May  9,  1660. 


MARYN  ADRIAENSEN 


291 


remained  in  the  occupation  of  various  tenants  till  1672, 
when  he  sold  the  eastern  portion  of  his  land,  with  the 
buildings,  to  Captain  John  Paine,  of  Boston,  but  the  latter 
had  hardly  taken  possession  when  New  York  was  captured 
by  the  Dutch,  and  Paine 's  property  was  confiscated.  The 
buildings,  with  a  number  of  others,  were  now  condemned  and 
demolished,  on  account  of  their  standing  too  near  the  line  of 
fortifications;  and  though  Heermans  recovered  his  land  by 
reason  of  a  mortgage  which  he  held  upon  it,  it  was  bereft  of 
most  of  its  value,  and  he  closed  out  finally  his  interests  here 
by  selling  the  western  portion  of  the  plot  in  1676  to  George 
Heathcote,  and  the  eastern  part  in  1678  to  Jan  Jansen  Slot. 

We  next  reach,  in  proceeding  along  the  Smits  Vly,  the 
old  Dutch  house  situated  in  a  large  garden  near  the  south- 
west corner  of  the  present  Maiden  Lane  and  Pearl  Street, 
occupied  at  the  time  of  our  survey  by  Lysbet  Tyssens.  This 
building,  of  which  mention  has  been  previously  made  (ante, 
page  280),  was  originally  the  house  of  Hendrick  Jansen,  the 
tailor,  and  was  purchased  from  him  in  August,  1611,  by 
Maryn  Adriaensen,  the  husband  of  Lysbet  Tyssens. 

As  Augustyn  Heermans  came  from  a  locality  identified 
with  the  origin  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  so  Maryn  Adriaen- 
sen came  from  a  place  in  like  manner  identified  with  another 
great  episode  of  history,  —  the  struggle  for  independence  of 
the  United  Netherlands.  He  was  born  (as  is  supposed)  at 
Veere,  — "the  Ferry,"  —  upon  the  north  coast  of  the  island 
of  Walcheren,  in  the  province  of  Zeeland;  and  two  genera- 
tions before,  his  grandfather  may  well  have  been  one  of  the 
"Gueux,"  or  "Sea-beggars,"  who,  from  Veere  and  from 
the  neighboring  town  of  Vlissingen,  or  Flushing,  roamed  the 
seas,  preying  upon  the  commerce  of  their  Spanish  masters 
and  oppressors,  till  in  1572  —  having  had  the  ports  of  Eng- 
land closed  against  them  —  they  took  by  storm  from  the 
Spaniards  the  neighboring  seaport  of  Briel,  which  the}'-  made 
the  seat  of  their  naval  power,  and  thus  laid  the  foundation- 
stone  of  the  Confederacy  of  the  Provinces  of  the  Nether- 


292     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


lands.  Rough  and  coarse,  but  brave,  and  passionately 
devoted  to  the  house  of  Orange,  they  made  for  themselves 
and  for  their  "land  of  sluices  "  a  name  in  History  and  Ro- 
mance; and  their  stern  and  somewhat  truculent  bearing, 
their  contempt  of  show  and  ostentation,  their  long  swords, 
cropped  hair,  and  scarred  faces  live  in  Freiligrath's  verse: 

"  Dann  riihren  die  da  schliefen  l'angst, 
Im  Grabe  sich  die  Geusen. 

44  Sie  steigen  auf ,  eine  wilde  Schaar, 
Im  Kleid  von  diistrer  Farbe, 
Mit  langem  Schwert,  und  kurzem  Haar 
Und  auf  der  Stirn  die  Narbe." 

Maryn  Adriaensen  was  one  of  the  earliest  colonists  of  New 
Netherland,  having  come  to  Fort  Orange,  or  Albany,  in  1631. 
Here  he  had  a  house  which  in  1642,  shortly  after  his  removal 
to  New  Amsterdam,  he  sold  to  Dominie  Johannes  Megapo- 
lensis,  then  recently  installed  as  pastor  at  Fort  Orange. 
Upon  taking  up  his  residence  in  the  Smits  Vly  at  New 
Amsterdam  in  the  summer  of  1641,  Adriaensen  seems  to  have 
become  rather  closely  associated  with  his  well-to-do  neighbor 
Jan  Jansen  Damen,  whose  farm  adjoined  the  rear  of  his  own 
plot  upon  the  west.  He  was  perhaps  in  some  sort  a  depend- 
ant of  Damen,  the  latter  having  loaned  him  1000  guilders 
upon  the  purchase  of  his  house  in  the  Smits  Vly.  He 
formed  one  of  the  party  at  Jan  Damen's  farmhouse  near 
Broadway,  at  the  famous  "Shrovetide  dinner,,,  in  1643,  at 
which,  according  to  popular  belief,  the  massacre  of  the 
Indians  was  planned  by  Director-General  Kieft,  with  Damen 
and  the  two  sons-in-law  of  the  latter,  Cornells  van  Tien- 
hoven,  the  secretary,  and  Abraham  Verplanck.1  It  is  at  any 
rate  certain  that  Adriaensen  with  Jan  Damen  and  Verplanck 
were  either  signers  of  the  remarkable  document  prepared 
about  this  time,  and  entered  on  the  Council  Minutes,  calling, 
in  the  name  of  the  whole  community,  for  the  murder  of  the 
Indians,  or  else  their  names  were  affixed  to  it  by  Van  Tien- 

1  See  ante,  page  102. 


KIEFT'S  MANIFESTO 


293 


hoven  himself.1  Whether  Maryn  Adriaensen  had  full  knowl- 
edge of  this  business,  or  whether  he  was  in  a  condition  at  the 
time  not  to  know  much  of  anything,  he  has  the  unenviable 
distinction  of  heading  the  petition,  and  of  receiving  the 
license  to  commit  murder  granted  thereon  by  Director-Gen- 
eral Kieft.2  When,  in  the  course  of  a  few  days  after  the 
slaughter  of  the  Indians,  the  smoke  of  burning  farmhouses 
and  the  reports  of  massacres  of  the  colonists  b}'  the  natives 
had  shown  Kieft  that  his  great  scheme  had  miscarried,  he 
promptly  set  about  carrying  out  a  further  part  of  his  plan ; 
namely,  that  of  shifting  the  blame  from  his  own  shoulders  to 
those  of  his  previously  selected  scapegoats.  He  accord- 
ingly issued  a  sort  of  manifesto  of  which  the  following  is  a 
portion :  — 

"  Some  persons,  delegated  by  the  people,  petitioned  us  to  be 
allowed  to  take  revenge  while  those  savages  were  within  our  reach, 
apparently  delivered  in  our  hands  by  Divine  Providence.  We 
entertained  an  aversion  to  bring  the  country  into  a  condition  of 
uproar,  and  pointed  out  to  those  persons  the  consequences  to  re- 
sult from  their  design,  particularly  with  regard  to  those  whose 
dwellings  were  situated  in  exposed  places,  as  our  forces  were  too 
few  to  attempt  to  defend  every  house  with  a  sufficient  number  of 
soldiers,  and  we  also  presented  to  them  other  considerations. 
They,  however,  persisted  in  their  desire,  and  told  us  that  if  we 
refused  our  consent,  the  blood  would  come  upon  our  own  heads, 
and  we  finally  found  ourselves  obliged  to  accede  to  their  wishes 
and  give  them  the  assistance  of  our  soldiers.  And  these  latter 
killed  a  considerable  number,  as  did  also  the  militia  on  their  side,,, 
etc. 

Maryn  Adriaensen  was  no  lamb  to  be  led  quietly  to  the 
slaughter  in  this  manner;  on  the  contrary,  he  was  a  man  of 
a  bold  and  violent  disposition,  like  his  ancestors,  the  Flemish 
sea-rovers.  He  had,  in  fact,  hardly  taken  up  his  residence 
in  New  Amsterdam  when  he  fell  into  trouble,  from  a  practice 

1  See  the  petition,  ante,  page  103. 

2  This  latter  document,  with  its  curious  mixture  of  violence,  craft,  and  blas- 
phemy, is  set  forth  upon  page  23,  ante. 


294     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


he  had,  in  violation  of  the  ordinances,  of  sailing  out  in  his 
cat-boat  to  meet  incoming  vessels  before  they  were  boarded 
by  the  official  sloop  of  the  West  India  Company ;  and  it  was 
perhaps  in  connection  with  this  same  business  that  he  was 
charged  by  the  fiscal  with  having  drawn  a  knife  upon  some 
person  with  whom  he  had  a  quarrel. 

When  Adriaensen  heard  that  the  Director-General  was 
attempting  to  unload  the  responsibility  for  the  Indian  mas- 
sacre mainly  upon  his  shoulders,  his  rage  knew  no  bounds, 
and  he  immediately  started  out  to  have  satisfaction  from 
Kieft.  On  the  21st  of  March,  1643,  Robert  Penoyer,  a 
young  man  who  was  doubtless  one  of  the  English  soldiers 
in  the  garrison  and  off  duty,  being  "in  the  tavern,"  —  prob- 
ably either  "the  Great  Tavern"  upon  the  shore,  or  Philip 
Geraerdy's  tavern  on  the  Marckveldt, —  saw  Lysbet  T}ssens, 
Maryn  Adriaensen 's  wife,  enter  the  tavern  in  a  state  of  great 
perturbation,  crying  that  "her  husband  would  kill  the  com- 
mander. Go  and  catch  him !  "  Penoyer  thereupon  made  his 
way  into  the  fort,  and  into  the  Director's  house,  where  he 
found  Adriaensen  with  a  pistol  cocked,  advancing  upon  the 
Director-General,  and  crying,  "  What  devilish  lies  are  these 
you  are  telling  of  me?"  Some  person  present,  however, 
seized  Maryn's  pistol,  while  Penoyer  took  his  sword  from 
him,  and  he  was  immediately  placed  under  arrest.  Within  a 
short  time,  however,  a  serving-man  of  Adriaensen,  one  Jacob 
Slangh,  appeared  at  the  fort  to  avenge  his  master,  and  fired 
a  pistol  at  the  Director-General,  but  without  effect.  Slangh 
was  thereupon  fired  on  and  killed  by  a  sentry  in  the  fort, 
and  his  head  was  afterwards  affixed  to  a  gibbet. 

As  for  Adriaensen,  his  cause  was  warmly  espoused  by  many 
of  the  principal  men  of  the  Colony,  among  others  by  Dominie 
Bogardus,1  and  in  the  excited  state  of  public  opinion,  it  was 

1  "  Then  you  embraced  the  cause  of  that  criminal,  composed  his  writings,  and 
took  upon  yourself  to  defend  him.  But  nevertheless  he  was  sent  in  chains  to 
Holland,  on  which  account  you  audaciously  fulminated  on  the  subject  during  a 
fortnight,  and  dishonored  the  pulpit  by  your  passionate  behaviour." 

(Kieft  to  Dominie  Bogardus,  2  January,  1646.) 


LYSBET  TYSSENS 


295 


deemed  prudent  by  the  Council  to  send  him  to  the  Nether- 
lands for  trial.  We  are  not  informed  of  the  proceedings,  if 
any,  which  took  place  in  the  Netherlands  in  relation  to  the 
case  of  Maryn  Adriaensen.  Mr.  D.  T.  Valentine  has  found 
evidence  that  he  returned  subsequently  to  New  Amsterdam. 
If  this  were  so,  he  took  no  prominent  part  in  any  matters, 
and  he  must  have  died  before  1654,  for  in  that  year  his 
widow  Lysbet  Tyssens  married  Gerloh0  Michielsen  of  Col- 
lumer  Zyll,  in  Friesland;  but  he  having  been  killed  by  the 
Indians  within  a  short  time,  she  went  to  reside  with  a 
married  daughter  at  Fort  Orange,  or  Albany.  Lysbet,  who 
was  from  Alcmaer  in  North  Holland,  seems  to  have  been  a 
woman  of  considerable  business  ability.  After  her  husband's 
imprisonment  she  took  charge  of  his  property  in  the  Smits 
Vly,  and  before  the  spring  of  1644  she  had  sold  a  consider- 
able portion  of  it  to  Jan  Jansen  Damen,  partly,  no  doubt,  in 
extinguishment  of  the  mortgage  he  held  upon  the  premises. 
The  parcel  sold  to  Damen  was  thrown  by  him  into  his  well- 
known  "Claaver  Weytie,"  or  "Clover  Pasture."  Lysbet 
retained  the  house,  with  about  half  an  acre  of  land,  at  the 
corner  of  Maagde  Paetje,  or  Maiden  Lane,  afterwards  in- 
creasing her  land  by  purchase.  After  the  deportation  of 
her  husband,  and  later,  after  his  death,  she  appears  to  have 
resided  upon  the  premises  at  times,  but  at  other  periods  it 
was  in  the  occupation  of  various  tenants.  Lysbet  Tyssens 
was  still  living  and  in  possession  of  the  property  as  late  as 
1682,  about  which  time  she  sold  off  several  lots  from  her 
garden  at  this  place.  She  had  a  son,  Tys  Marynsen,  who 
was  a  small  boy  at  the  time  of  his  father's  attack  upon  Kieft, 
but  we  have  no  further  information  respecting  him,  and  do 
not  know  whether  he  reached  maturity. 


CHAPTER  XXI 


THE  MAAGDE  PAETJE,  OR  MAIDEN  LANE.  —  SKIPPER 
CORNELISSEN.  —  EREDERIK  LUBBERTSEN  AND  HIS 
HOUSE.  — JAN  AND  MARY  PEECK.  — SANDER  LEENDERT- 
SEN'S  HOUSE.— JAN  VINJE,  THE  FIRST  WHITE  CHILD 
BORN  IN  NEW  NETHERLAND.  —  VINJE'S  BREWERY 

THERE  is,  perhaps,  as  much  about  the  modern  Maiden 
Lane  to  remind  one  of  the  early  times  of  New  Amster- 
dam as  will  be  found  in  any  locality  of  New  York  at  the 
present  day.  Standing  at  the  corner  of  Pearl  Street  and 
Maiden  Lane,  and  looking  in  the  direction  of  Broadway  past 
the  dark  opening  in  the  tall  houses  which  marks  the  entrance 
of  Liberty  Street,  —  the  historic  Crown  Street  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  name  of  which  was  changed  at  the  close  of  the 
Revolutionary  War  by  the  somewhat  hysterical  New  Yorkers 
of  the  period,  because  they  thought  they  saw  a  sort  of  profana- 
tion in  the  word  "  Crown,"  — the  observer  notices  before  him, 
curving  away  to  the  right  between  high  and  dingy  stores  and 
warehouses,  the  same  Maagde  Paetje,  or  Maidens'  Path,  only 
somewhat  wider  than  of  yore,  which  Lysbet  Tyssens  and 
Frederik  Lubbertsen,  from  their  respective  dwellings  at  the 
opposite  corners  of  these  same  two  streets,  saw,  in  the  middle 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  winding  through  its  hollow, 
between  the  trees  and  bushes  which  lined  the  fence  rows  of 
Jan  Damen's  and  of  Cornells  van  Tienhoven's  farms  on 
either  side  of  it. 

As  he  passes  through  Gold,  or  William,  or  Nassau  streets 
too,  the  same  observer  will  see  before  him  the  very  ravine  or 
depression,  though  not  so  deep  as  of  old,  through  which 
the    first  wood-cutters  of   New  Amsterdam   traced  their 


Looking  up  Maiden  Lane  from  Pearl  Street. 


THE  MAAGDE  PAETJE 


297 


path  down  to  the  East  River  shore.  In  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century  it  was  doubtless  like  hundreds  of  similar 
low-lying  farm  lanes  of  the  present  day,  where  the  outcasts 
of  the  forests  —  dogwoods  and  elder  bushes,  sumachs  and 
witch-hazels  —  collect  along  the  hedges,  and  are  overhung 
by  cat-briers  and  bitter-sweet  vines,  woodbine  and  the  wild 
grape.  Towards  the  shore,  near  the  present  Gold  Street,  was 
a  wet  spot  at  the  foot  of  Van  Tienhoven's  hill  pasture  called 
"  Gouwenberg  "  (where,  near  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, tan-yards  were  established),  and  here,  in  the  springy 
ground,  the  arads,  first  harbingers  of  the  vernal  season,  made 
their  appearance,  pushing  through  the  wet  soil  with  their  gor- 
geous purple,  red,  and  black  hoods,  and  their  coarse  leaves  of 
pale  green.  Here  the  water  collected  into  a  small  rill,  and  ran 
down  along  the  lane  into  the  East  River  through  a  channel 
likely  enough  covered,  as  such  rills  are  apt  to  be,  in  the  late 
summer  by  the  green  and  yellow  masses  of  the  jewel-weed, 
and  thickly  bordered  by  mint  and  tansy. 

What  gave  this  by-lane  the  name  of  the  Maagde  Paetje, 
or  Maidens'  Path,  by  which  it  was  known  in  the  town  from 
the  earliest  days,  we  can  only  conjecture.  Was  it  in  honor 
of  Maria,  Christina,  and  Rachel,  the  three  stepdaughters  of 
Jan  Damen,  who  must  have  resided  on  the  adjoining  farm 
with  their  own  father,  Guillaume  Vigne  (or  Willem  Vinje,  as 
his  Dutch  neighbors  put  it),  at  the  time  of  the  very  first  ad- 
vance of  settlers  from  the  traders'  cabins  at  the  Blockhouse  into 
Manhattan  Island  ?  We  do  not  know  ;  but  certain  it  is  that 
the  lane  was  and  is  Maiden  Lane,1  —  a  historic  name  worth  a 
hundred  times  the  meaningless  "  Pine,"  "  Cedar,"  and  "  Lib- 
erty "  streets  in  its  vicinity. 

Provision  seems  to  have  been  first  made  for  the  care  of 
this  lane~(which  appears  at  the  time  to  have  been  mainly  used 

1  Towards  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  about  the  time  that  streets 
were  being  laid  out  through  the  adjoining  Damen  farm,  the  old  lane  was  occa- 
sionally spoken  of  as  "The  Green  Lane."  This  name  never  became  popular, 
however,  and  was  eventually  fixed  upon  the  small  street  west  of  the  present 
Nassau  Street,  and  extending  from  Liberty  Street  to  Maiden  Lane ;  this  is 
sometimes  called  Liberty  Place  at  the  present  day. 


298     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


by  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven  for  access  to  parts  of  his  farm 
upon  the  north  side  of  it)  in  the  ground-brief  of  September  7, 
1G41,  to  Lourens  Cornelissen,  for  the  parcel  of  ground  at  the 
northwest  corner  of  Pearl  Street  and  Maiden  Lane ;  "  with 
the  express  condition  that  the  said  Lourens  Cornelissen  shall 
repair  the  road  leading  from  the  farm  of  Cornells  van  Tien- 
hoven to  the  beach,  fit  for  the  use  of  wagons,  and  when  once 
repaired,  at  the  cost  of  the  aforesaid  Lourens  Cornelissen,  it 
shall  henceforth  and  forever  be  maintained  and  kept  up  by 
said  L.  Cornelissen  and  Cornells  van  Tienhoven,  half  and 
half."  At  the  time  of  our  survey,  the  Maagde  Paetje  had  lost 
part  of  its  rural  character.  This  was  owing  principally  to 
the  erection  of  a  brewery  upon  it  several  years  before  by  Jan 
Damen.  This  building  appears  to  have  stood  on  the  south 
side  of  the  lane,  and  at  the  foot  of  the  hill  pasture  called  the 
Claaver  Weytie,  wmere  the  water  supply  was  abundant.  The 
position  of  this  building  would  seem  to  have  been  about  sixty 
feet  east  of  the  present  William  Street.  It  had  been  managed 
for  several  years  by  Jan  Vinje,  the  stepson  of  Jan  Damen,  but 
in  1658,  some  seven  years  after  the  death  of  the  latter,  the 
heirs  of  the  estate  sold  the  brewery  with  nearly  half  an  acre 
of  ground  for  1375  guilders  ($550)  to  one  Anthony  Moore, 
and  it  then,  in  the  course  of  several  years,  passed  through 
various  hands,  eventually  coming  again  into  the  possession  of 
Jan  Vinje.  This  latter  personage  was  for  a  long  time  en- 
gaged in  the  brewing  business  upon  the  modern  Pearl  Street 
near  Piatt,  and  although  the  period  was  several  years  after 
the  date  of  our  survey,  some  reference  will  be  made  to  him 
in  speaking  of  the  latter  locality. 

At  the  northwestern  angle  of  Maiden  Lane  and  Pearl 
Street  stood  a  house,  erected  probably  in  1641  or  1642  by 
Captain  Lourens  Cornelissen  Vanderwel,  who,  in  documents 
executed  by  himself,  bears  the  imposing  designation  of 
"  Skipper  under  God  of  the  ship  the  '  Angel  Gabriel/  of  about 
one  hundred  lasts  burden."  The  skipper  owned  about  an 
acre  of  ground  here,  stretching  back  some  two  hundred  and 
fifty  feet  to  the  foot  of  the  "  Gouwenberg  "  of  Secretary  Van 


SKIPPER  CORNELISSEN 


299 


Tienhoven's  farm.  The  ground  at  this,  the  widest  part  of 
the  Smits  Vly,  seems  to  have  been  pretty  wet,  and  the  skipper 
had  to  establish  a  broad  trench  through  his  garden,  about  on 
the  line  between  the  present  buildings  Nos.  205  and  207 
Pearl  Street,  and  probably  another  one  upon  the  east  side  of 
his  plot,  between  the  buildings  Nos.  219  and  221. 

Of  Captain  Cornelissen  we  have  not  much  information. 
In  his  blustering  letter  of  January  2,  1646,  to  Dominie  Bo- 
gardus,  already  alluded  to,1  Director-General  Kieft  says: 
"  when,  however,  in  1644,  one  Lourens  Cornelissen  was  here, 
a  man  of  profligate  character,  who  had  violated  his  oath,  had 
committed  perjury  and  theft,  he  was  taken  under  your  pat- 
ronage, and  you  were  in  daily  correspondence  with  him,  for 
the  reason  merely  that  he  had  slandered  the  Director."  The 
gist  of  Cornelissen's  offence,  however,  being  evidently  the 
fact  that  he  had  spoken  against  Kieft,  it  is  perhaps  fair  to 
look  upon  the  rest  of  the  accusation,  coupled  as  it  is  with  the 
somewhat  inconsistent  charge  of  much  intimacy  with  a  min- 
ister of  the  gospel,  as  rather  in  the  nature  of  a  testimonial 
of  good  character  than  otherwise,  especially  in  view  of  the 
source  from  whence  it  came. 

However,  Skipper  Lourens  did  not  long  retain  his  house  in 
the  Smits  Vly,  for  in  the  spring  of  1643,  he  sold  it,  with 
about  half  an  acre  of  the  ground,  for  the  sum  of  1600  guil- 
ders, or  about  $640  of  the  present  currency,  to  Frederik 
Lubbertsen,  who  was  the  owner  and  probably  the  occupant 
at  the  time  of  our  survey.  Lubbertsen,  who  was  a  man  of 
about  forty  years  of  age  at  the  time  of  his  purchase  of  this 
property,  had  come  from  Amsterdam,  with  his  wife  Styntje 
and  a  daughter  Rebecca.  In  1640,  he  had  received  a  grant 
from  the  Dutch  authorities  of  a  large  tract  of  land  at  Gou- 
wanus  on  Long  Island  ;  and  it  seems  probable  that  from  his 
residence  on  Manhattan  Island,  he  devoted  his  time  to  its 
clearing  and  cultivation,  as  one  of  the  appurtenances  of  his 
house  in  the  Smits  Vly  was  an  oven,  which  he  stipulated 
should  be  built  capable  of  baking  at  one  time  the  equivalent 

1  See  ante,  page  294,  note. 


300     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


in  flour  of  about  a  bushel  and  a  half  of  grain,  a  fact  indicative 
of  the  presence  of  a  considerable  force  of  work-hands,  perhaps 
slaves,  who  doubtless  manned  his  farm-boat  daily  for  many 
years.  His  Long  Island  possessions  were  in  plain  view  from 
his  house  at  the  foot  of  the  Maagde  Paetje.  Looking  to  his 
left  across  the  East  River,  he  could  see,  in  the  direction  of  the 
Wallabout,  his  timber  land,  a  tract  of  about  thirty  acres  of 
magnificent  forest  trees,  some  of  which  were  still  landmarks 
far  into  the  next  century  ; 1  it  covered  the  high  ground  near 
the  foot  of  the  present  Bridge  and  Jay  streets  in  Brooklyn. 

About  a  mile  to  the  right,  down  the  East  River,  beyond  the 
high  sand  bluffs  forming  what  are  now  known  as  the  Brook- 
lyn Heights,  lay  the  large  tract  acquired  by  Lubbertsen  in 
1640.  This  extended  from  about  the  foot  of  the  present 
Atlantic  Avenue,  in  Brooklyn,  nearly  a  mile  along  the  shore, 
and  it  ran  back  from  the  shore  an  almost  equal  distance.  A 
large  part  of  it  was  a  region  of  salt  meadows,  interspersed 
with  ponds  and  tidal  creeks  and  with  small  wooded  islands 
and  sand  banks,  —  the  last  deposits  of  the  retreating  glaciers.2 
Beyond  this  low  tract,  however,  the  ground  rose  into  swelling 
hills,  long  cleared  and  occupied  by  the  Indians  as  "maize 
land,"  of  which  Lubbertsen's  grant  contained  a  considerable 
share. 

Prior  to  the  year  1657,  Frederik  Lubbertsen  had  become 
a  widower;  his  daughter  Rebecca,  too,  had  left  him  some 
eight  or  nine  years  before  that  time,  marrying  Jacob  Leen- 
dertsen  van  der  Grift  and  taking  up  her  residence  in  a  house 
upon  the  east  side  of  Broadway,  conveyed  to  her  by  her 
father.  About  the  date  named,  we  find  Lubbertsen  marrying 
for  his  second  wife  Tryntje  Hendrickse,  widow  of  Cornells 
Pietersen,  one  of  the  earlier  settlers.  It  was  about  this  time 
that  Lubbertsen,  doubtless  with  the  view  of  establishing  him- 
self upon  his  Long  Island  farm,3  sold  his  house  in  the  Smits 

1  A  great  tulip  or  whitewood  tree,  which  stood  upon  the  bluff  near  the  shore, 
was  known  far  and  wide  and  is  shown  on  several  maps  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

2  The  tract  is  now  in  part  occupied  by  the  Atlantic  Basin,  so  called. 

8  Soon  after  the  sale  of  the  Smits  Vly  property,  Lubbertsen  seems  to  have 


BANISHMENT  OF  MARY  PEECK  301 


Vly  to  Jan  Peeck,  an  eccentric  character,  part  Indian  trader, 
part  broker  between  the  English  and  Dutch  merchants,  and  part 
general  speculator.1  His  wife,  Maria  or  Mary,  managed  his 
property,  and  sometimes  disposed  of  it  in  his  long  absences. 
She  seems  also  to  have  occasionally  accompanied  him  on  his 
trading  expeditions,  where  apparently  she  acquired  consider- 
able acquaintance  with  the  Indians,  which  she  turned  to  ad- 
vantage by  selling  them  liquor,  to  the  great  indignation  of  the 
authorities  at  New  Amsterdam,  who,  in  1664,  fined  her  500 
guilders,  and  banished  her  from  Manhattan  Island  for  this 
offence,  "  for  which,"  as  they  say,  "  she  has  long  been  famous." 
She  is  said,  at  this  time,  to  have  retired  to  the  new  settlement 
of  Schenectady  for  a  short  period;  but  the  Dutch  regime 
coming  to  an  end  not  long  after  her  banishment,  she  soon 
returned  to  New  York,  and  was  the  owner  of  a  house  on 
Hoogh  Straet  (or  Duke's  Street,  as  the  English  began  to 
call  it),  near  the  Town  Hall,  having  in  the  mean  time  sold 
the  establishment  in  the  Smits  Vly.2 

The  easternmost  half  of  his  land  in  the  Smits  Vly  had 
been  sold  by  Frederik  Lubbertsen,  in  1652,  to  one  Albert 
Cornelissen  ;  it  does  not  appear  to  have  been  built  upon  at 
the  time  of  our  survey,  and  in  1656  most  of  it  came  into  the 

built  a  farmhouse  near  the  East  Kiver  shore  upon  his  Long  Island  farm.  This 
stood  not  far  from  the  foot  of  the  present  Pacific  iStreet  in  Brooklyn.  Here  Lub- 
bertsen resided  for  many  years,  and  here  he  died,  an  aged  man,  in  the  latter  part 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  His  large  plantation  here  was  divided  between  his 
two  daughters,  by  his  second  wife :  Aeltje,  who  married  Cornelis  Sebring,  and 
Elsje,  wife  of  Jacob  Hansen  Bergen  ;  their  descendants  are  still  to  be  found  in 
Brooklyn. 

1  It  was  this  Jan  Peeck  who,  by  reason  of  his  making  use,  as  a  trading  post 
for  traffic  with  the  Indians,  of  the  sheltered  haven  afforded  by  the  creek  empty- 
ing into  the  Hudson  River  just  south  of  the  mountains  of  the  Highlands  (even 
wintering  there  with  his  sloop),  gave  the  stream  the  name  of  Jan  Peeck's  Kill, 
which  name  is  preserved  in  that  of  the  adjacent  village  of  Peekskill  in  West- 
chester County. 

2  She  is  thought  to  have  been  the  person  occasionally  spoken  of  in  the  records 
about  this  time  as  "  Long  Mary,"  though  this  is  not  accurately  known.  She  was 
either  the  daughter  or  sister  of  Philip  du  Trieux  (or  Do  Truy,  as  the  Dutch 
called  him).  After  some  vicissitudes  in  her  life,  she  is  supposed  to  have  married 
Cornelis  Volckersen,  one  of  the  oldest  settlers,  and  after  his  death,  in  1650,  she 
married  Jan  Peeck. 


302     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


possession  of  Jan  Peeck,  still  apparently  unbuilt  upon.  After 
Peeck  had  sold  to  Cornells  Clopper,  in  the  year  1660,  the 
Lubbertsen  house,  at  the  corner  of  Maiden  Lane,  which  has 
just  been  referred  to,  he  seems  to  have  built  a  house  upon  the 
plot  which  he  had  acquired  from  Albert  Cornelissen,  and  this 
remained  in  possession  of  him  and  of  his  wife  for  many  years. 
This  house,  which  must  have  occupied  the  site,  or  a  part  of 
the  site  of  the  present  building  No.  207  Pearl  Street,  was  just 
about  sufficiently  removed  from  the  observation  of  the  town 
authorities  to  afford  a  convenient  drinking  house  for  Indian 
visitors  to  New  Amsterdam,  and  it  is  supposed  to  have  been 
the  seat  of  the  illicit  liquor  traffic  for  which  Mary  Peeck  was 
banished  from  Manhattan  Island  in  1664. 

Next  adjoining  upon  the  north  to  the  apparently  vacant 
plot  of  Albert  Cornelissen  in  the  Smits  Vly,  stood  in  1655 
a  house  with  about  half  an  acre  of  ground,  belonging  to 
an  individual  who  was  a  vara  avis  in  New  Amsterdam,  a 
thoroughly  Teutonized  Scotchman,  as  much  of  a  curiosity 
in  his  way  as  was  the  Teutonized  Englishman,  Carel  van 
Brugge,  already  spoken  of.  This  person's  appellation  among 
his  neighbors  was  the  good  honest  Dutch  name  of  Sander 
Leendertsen.  A  little  investigation,  however,  shows  him 
to  have  been  Alexander  (or  Sandy)  Lindesay,  of  the  Glen, 
in  Scotland,1  who  is  said  to  have  come  from  the  neighbor- 

1  His  appellation  is  evidently  derived  from  the  ancient  and  well-known  division 
of  the  Lindesay  family  of  Scotland  into  the  branch  of  Glenesk  (called  frequently 
"of  the  Glen  ")  and  into  that  of  "  the  Mount."  The  latter,  which  is  the  elder 
branch,  has  had  considerable  lustre  thrown  upon  it  by  one  of  its  members,  Sir 
David  Lindesay,  the  Scottish  poet  of  the  sixteenth  century,  who  bore  the  office 
of  heraldic  King-at-arms  under  James  IV.  Many  will  remember  the  poet's  de- 
scription, as  given  by  Sir  Walter  Scott,  in  "  Marmion  "  : 

"  He  was  a  man  of  middle  age ; 
In  aspect  manly,  grave,  and  sage, 

As  on  King's  errand  come  ; 
But  in  the  glances  of  his  eye, 
A  penetrating,  keen,  and  sly 

Expression  found  its  home  ; 
The  flash  of  that  satiric  rage, 


SANDER  LEENDERTSEN 


303 


hood  of  Inverness.  In  Dutch  times  he  used  the  name 
Sander  Leendertsen  freely,  but  after  the  English  regime 
commenced,  he  called  himself  usually  Alexander  Glenn,  by 
which  family  name  his  descendants  were  known. 

Alexander  Lindesay,  or  Leendertsen,  is  said  to  have  come 
to  New  Netherland  at  a  very  early  period,  employed  in  some 
capacity  by  the  West  India  Company  at  its  Fort  Nassau  on 
the  Delaware  River,  where  in  1633  he,  with  Augustyn  Heer- 
mans,  were  witnesses  of  the  sale  of  lands  on  the  Schuylkill 
River  by  the  Indians  to  Arent  Coersen.  Sander  soon  became 
an  Indian  trader,  apparently  dividing  his  time  between  New 
Amsterdam  and  Fort  Orange  or  Albany,  at  which  latter 
settlement  he  is  found  as  early  as  1616.  His  place  in  the 
Smits  Vly,  which  had  formerly  been  the  easterly  half  of  the 
garden  and  ground  of  Skipper  Lourens  Cornelissen,  was 
granted  to  Sander  Leendertsen  by  the  Director  and  Council 
in  1616,  it  having  been  forfeited  by  Cornelissen  by  reason  of 
his  allowing  it  to  remain  vacant  and  unimproved  for  more 
than  the  prescribed  period.1  Here  Sander  immediately  built 
a  stone  house,  upon  the  site  of  the  present  glue  warehouse, 
No.  211  Pearl  Street,  and  here  he  resided  when  in  New 
Amsterdam,  certainly  as  late  as  1658,  and  possibly  later;2 
but  in  1665  he  was  one  of  the  pioneers  of  the  new  settlement 

"  Which,  bursting  on  the  early  stage, 
Branded  the  vices  of  the  age, 

And  broke  the  keys  of  Rome. 
Still  is  thy  name  in  high  account, 

And  still  thy  verse  has  charms, 
Sir  David  Lindesay  of  the  Mount, 

Lord  Lion  King-at-arms  !  " 

1  Some  years,  afterwards,  however,  Sander  acquired  a  release  from  Skipper 
Cornelissen. 

2  At  a  period  twenty  years  later  than  that  of  our  survey,  this  plot  of  Sander 
Leendertsen  contained  another  building  which  must  have  occupied  in  part  the 
ground  covered  by  the  present  No.  217  Pearl  Street.  What  this  was,  or  when 
it  was  built,  does  not  appear.  Sander  Leendertsen's  well  is  clearly  indicated  in 
the  descriptions ;  it  stood  some  fifty  feet  in  a  northeasterly  direction  from  his 
stone  house,  and  its  remains  are  perhaps  yet  under  the  building  No.  215  Pearl 
Street. 


304     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


of  Schenectady,  after  which  date  there  is  no  evidence  that  he 
again  resided  in  New  York.1  A  few  years  before  this  latter 
date  he  is  said  to  have  parted  with  his  property  in  the  Smits 
Vly,  but  if  this  were  the  case,  he  must  have  soon  resumed  it, 
possibly  by  virtue  of  a  mortgage  upon  it.  The  place  seems 
for  many  years  to  have  been  in  the  possession  of  various 
tenants.  About  the  time  of  the  surrender  to  the  English  in 
1G64,  the  house  appears  to  have  been  occupied  by  one  James 
Webb,  a  Londoner,  as  a  tavern  or  lodging-house  with  the 
sign  of  Saint  George  and  the  Dragon.2 

At  the  frontier  settlement  of  Schenectady,  Alexander 
Lindesay,  or  Glenn,  spent  the  last  twenty  years  of  his  life. 
His  house,  like  those  of  the  rest  of  the  settlers,  was  within  the 
stockaded  village,  but  his  land  embraced  a  tract  of  nearly 
a  thousand  acres  of  fertile  meadows  on  the  north  side  of  the 
Mohawk  River,  and  to  this  he  gave  the  name  of  Nova  Scotia. 
Alexander  did  not  live  to  witness  the  massacre  of  his  neigh- 
bors in  1690  by  the  French  and  Indians ;  he  had  died  about 
five  years  before  that  event.  The  members  of  his  family, 
however,  were  treated  with  respect  by  the  French  command- 
ant. Feelings  of  humanity,  and  possibly  some  Jacobite  pro- 
pensities in  the  Scotch  blood  of  the  Glenns,  had  induced  them 
to  show  kindness  to  certain  Frenchmen  who  had  been  taken 
prisoners  by  the  English  in  the  war  which  Louis  XIV.  was 
waging  to  restore  James  II.  to  the  English  throne;  and  as  a 
mark  of  gratitude,  the  Glenn  house  in  Schenectady  is  said  to 
have  been  spared  by  the  express  command  of  the  French 
governor  of  Canada  on  the  destruction  of  the  rest  of  the  vil- 
lage in  1690. 

1  In  1656  he  acted  as  an  agent  at  New  Amsterdam  for  Jacob  Flodder  of  Fort 
Orange,  in  the  sale  and  conveyance  by  the  latter  of  the  lots  in  his  speculative 
purchase  of  what  was  known  as  the  Onthoek  of  the  Damen  farm.  See  ante, 
page  271. 

2  This  will  doubtless  serve  to  explain  the  mysterious  entry  of  the  burgomas- 
ters in  their  minutes,  under  date  of  March  31,  1665,  at  which  time  the  citizens 
were  called  upon  to  declare  how  many  soldiers  of  the  garrison  they  were  willing 
to  lodge :  "  The  Man  of  the  Knight  of  St.  George  will  take  one."  This  record 
has  puzzled  many  an  inquirer.  See  Valentine's  Manual  N.  Y.,  Com.  Council 
1861,  p.  610. 


THE  GLENN  MANSION,  SCHENECTADY  305 


A  more  quiet  state  of  affairs  in  the  next  century  induced 
the  Glenns  to  build  the  stately,  albeit  somewhat  neglected  old 
mansion  which  still  stands  upon  their  estate,  on  the  north 
side  of  the  Mohawk  River  at  Schenectady.  The  stroller, 
crossing  the  long  bridge  over  the  Mohawk  at  Schenectady, 
and  turning  westward  along  the  banks  of  the  river,  will  see 
to  his  left,  at  the  distance  of  half  a  mile  or  so  from  the 
bridge,  —  standing  upon  a  low,  grassy  hillock  overlooking 
the  city  and  the  broad  meadows  of  the  Mohawk  with  their 
curious  purplish  tinge  of  early  summer,  and  the  willowed 
islands  and  shores  of  that  lake-like  stream,  —  a  square,  stuc- 
coed house,  with  a  flat,  railed  roof,  bearing  upon  the  front  of 
the  building, in  iron  letters,  the  date  "A.  O.  1713."  Ancient 
trees  surround  the  house,  some  of  which  may  have  stood  there 
when  Sander  Leendertsen's  descendants  erected  the  building, 
within  less  than  thirty  years  from  his  death.  It  is  one  of  the 
historic  mansions  of  the  State,  and  should  not  be  allowed  to 
perish. 

As  for  the  property  of  Sander  Leendertsen  in  the  Smits 
Vly,  it  was  finally  disposed  of  by  him  in  the  fall  of  1675, — 
the  easterly  portion  to  Abraham  Lamberts  en  Moll,  and  the 
larger  western  portion,  with  the  original  house,  to  Hendrick 
Vandewater.  Certain  adverse  claims  existed,  as  it  would 
seem,  against  this  property,  for  in  1674,  we  find  one  John 
Saffin  sending  a  communication  to  Secretary  Nicoll,  complain- 
ing that  "  Henry  Vandewater  hath  seruptitiously  obtained  a 
mortgage  of  old  Sander  Leendertsen  of  Albany  on  the  stone 
house  situated  in  the  Smits  Vly  which  was  long  before  made 
over  to,  and  hath  been  in  the  possession  of  Captain  Thomas 
Willet  and  now  pertains  to  his  heires."  He  asks  that  Vande- 
water be  prevented  from  exposing  the  premises  for  sale  or 
otherwise  prejudicing  the  said  "heires"  till  they  have  an 
opportunity  of  protecting  their  interests.  No  action,  how- 
ever, seems  to  have  followed  this  communication,  and  Van- 
dewater and  his  family  remained  in  the  occupation  of  the 
property  for  many  years. 

20 


306     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


At  the  portion  of  Smits  Vly  which  we  have  now  reached, 
the  river  front  had  been  originally  embraced  in  the  farm  of 
Secretary  Van  Tienhoven.  He,  however,  had  sold  off  various 
plots  of  the  low-lying  ground  along  the  road,  and  one  of  these 
plots,  which  covered  the  sites  of  the  present  buildings  Nos. 
225  to  231  Pearl  Street,  together  with  a  portion  of  the 
modern  Piatt  Street,1  was  conveyed  by  him  in  the  year  1656 
to  Willem  Beeckman;  it  then  contained  a  house,  however, 
which  in  all  probability  stood  there  at  the  time  of  our  survey. 
This  plot  of  ground  becomes  of  interest  as  having  been  for  many 
years  the  residence  and  the  seat  of  the  brewing  operations 
of  Jan  Vinje,  as  he  was  called  among  his  Dutch  neighbors  (or 
Jean  Vigne,  as  his  parents  would  probably  have  called  him), 
a  leading  citizen  of  New  Amsterdam,  and  a  man  who,  as 
there  is  eveiy  reason  to  believe,  enjoys  the  distinction  of  hav- 
ing been  the  first  child  of  European  parentage  born  in  New 
Amsterdam  or  in  New  Netherland. 

Our  information  upon  this  point  is  derived  from  the  Jour- 
nal of  the  Labadist  missionaries,  Danker  and  Sluyter,  who 
visited  New  York  in  1679.2  While  in  the  town  they  lodged 
with  one  Jacob  Hellekers,  the  site  of  whose  house  is  now 
occupied  by  the  building  No.  255  Pearl  Street,  near  Fulton 
Street.  They  were  therefore  near  neighbors  to  Jan  Vinje, 
with  whom  they  soon  became  acquainted.  He  was  then,  they 
tell  us,  about  sixty-five  years  of  age,  a  prominent  man,  well 
known  to  all  the  citizens,  many  of  whom  had  themselves 
resided  in  the  town  and  had  been  intimately  acquainted  with 
him  for  from  thirty  to  forty  years.  It  was  the  common 
understanding  that  he  was  the  first  person  born  in  the  colony, 
and  the  date  of  his  birth  would  therefore  go  back  to  the 
year  1614.  His  parents,  so  the  Labadists  inform  us,  were 
Guillaume  Vigne,  and  his  wife,  Adrienne  Cuville,  from 
Valenciennes  in  France.  How  they  came  to  be  at  New 
Amsterdam  in  the  early  days  of  the  trading-post  we  do  not 

1  Piatt  Street  was  opened  in  the  period  between  1829  and  1835. 

2  See  their  Journal  (which  we  owe  to  the  labors  of  Hon.  Henry  C.  Murphy), 
in  Vol.  I.  of  the  Memoirs  of  the  Long  Island  Historical  Society. 


JAN  VINJE 


307 


know,  but  there  is  certainly  nothing  improbable  in  the  asser- 
tion that  a  trader  or  an  officer  of  the  post  should  have  had  his 
family  with  him  at  New  Amsterdam.  In  the  mouths  of  their 
Dutch  neighbors,  the  husband  became  known  as  Willem 
Vinje,  and  his  wife  as  Adriana  Cuvilje.  There  is  reason  to 
believe  that  Willem  Vinje  was  the  first  tenant  of  the  farm 
laid  out  north  of  the  present  Wall  Street  by  the  West  India 
Company,  and  that  he  died  there.  In  1632  his  widow  mar- 
ried Jan  Jansen  Damen,  with  whom  the  farm  is  more  gener- 
ally associated.  At  the  date  last  named,  as  we  are  informed 
by  an  instrument  in  the  Albany  records,  of  the  four  children 
of  Willem  Vinje  and  his  wife,  two  were  married,  Maria  (to 
Abraham  Verplanck),  and  Christina  (to  Dirck  Volckertsen), 
while  two,  Rachel  and  Jan,  were  "  minors " :  as  both  of  the 
latter,  however,  were  married  within  the  next  six  years 
(Rachel  to  the  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven),  they  must  have 
been  in  the  latter  years  of  their  minority  in  1632,  and  the  age 
of  Jan  Vinje,  according  to  the  Labadists,  which  would  have 
been  seventeen  or  eighteen  at  that  time,  is  thus  confirmed.1 

The  plot  of  ground  we  are  considering,  with  its  brew-house, 
came  into  the  possession  of  Jan  Vinje  about  the  year  1664, 
that  building  having  been  erected  a  few  years  before,  and  at 
some  date  between  1656  and  1660 :  it  had  passed  through  the 
hands  of  two  or  three  individuals  who  do  not  appear  to  have 
met  with  success  in  its  management,  and  Vinje  probably 
acquired  it  through  the  foreclosure  of  a  mortgage.  A  partial 
description  of  the  premises  has  been  preserved  to  us.  At  the 
southwestern  corner  of  the  plot,  upon  ground  now  partly 
embraced  in  Piatt  Street  and  partly  in  the  modern  building 
No.  225  Pearl  Street  at  the  northwest  corner  of  Piatt,  stood 
its  mill-house ;  while  the  brewery  itself  appears  to  have  occu- 
pied a  rear  position  in  the  spacious  enclosure  which  was  about 

1  The  statement  has  often  been  made  that  Sarah,  the  daughter  of  Joris 
Rapalje,  was  the  first  white  child  born  in  New  Netherland.  This  statement  is 
based  upon  an  allegation  made  by  her  in  a  petition  to  the  Council  asking  for  a 
grant  of  land  in  165G.  Without  discussing  the  value  of  this  document  as  evi- 
dence, an  examination  of  it  will  show  that  she  merely  describes  herself  as  "  the 
first  born  Christian  daughter  in  New  Netherland." 


308     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


eighty  feet  front  by  one  hundred  and  sixty  in  depth.  Both  of 
these  buildings  were  erected  a  short  time  after  the  period  of 
our  survey ;  but  the  dwelling-house  itself,  which  in  all  prob- 
ability stood  upon  a  part  of  the  ground  now  covered  by  the 
buildings  Nos.  227  and  229  Pearl  Street,  appears  to  have  been 
constructed  by  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven  in  1647.  His  build- 
ing contract  with  the  carpenter  Rynier  Dominicus  is  still 
extant  and  affords  some  curious  specifications.  The  house 
was  to  be  thirty  feet  long  by  twenty  feet  wide  on  the  inside ; 
it  was  to  have  an  "  outlet,"  or  entry,  "  eight  feet  wide,  right 
through."  The  "  story  of  the  front  room,  nine  and  one  half 
feet  high :  that  of  the  back  room,  twelve  and  one  half  feet " : 
with  "five  cross  beams  with  girders  and  one  without."  The 
entry  was  to  contain  the  usual  "  bedstead "  built  in.  The 
exterior  chimney  was  to  be  of  timber ;  and  the  beams  of  the 
small  structure  were  to  have  the  capacious  cross  dimensions  of 
ten  inches  by  seven.  Vinje  remained  in  possession  of  this 
property  until  the  summer  of  1684,  when  he  sold  it  to  Nicho- 
las de  Meyer,  in  whose  family  it  continued  for  many  years. 
The  old  buildings  seem  to  have  been  removed  or  destroyed 
before  1712,  as  a  deed  of  the  property,  executed  in  that  year,1 
mentions  it  as  ground  "  upon  which  lately  stood  a  messuage 
with  a  brew  house  and  mill  house."  The  premises  remained, 
during  the  greater  portion  of  the  eighteenth  century,  only 
partly  built  upon,  and  at  the  time  of  the  British  occupation  of 
New  York,  during  the  War  of  the  Revolution,  they  were 
occupied  by  the  barracks  of  the  Hessian  troops. 

1  Lib.  xxviii.  cons.,  page  9,  N.  Y.  Register's  Office. 


CHAPTER  XXII 


SECRETARY  VAN  TIENHOVENS  BOUWERY  OF  "  WAL LEX- 
STEIN."  —  THE  GOUWENBERG.  —  VAN  TIENH OVENS 
LANE.  — THE  VANDERCLYFF  FAMILY 

O  Earth,  what  changes  hast  thou  seen ! 
There  where  the  long  street  roars,  hath  been 
The  stillness  of  the  central  sea. 

The  hills  are  shadows,  and  they  flow 
From  form  to  form,  and  nothing  stands; 
They  melt  like  mist,  the  solid  lands, 
Like  clouds  they  shape  themselves  and  go. 

Tennyson  :  "  In  Memoriam." 

AS  one  passes  along  the  modern  John  Street,  between 
Cliff  and  Pearl  streets,  he  sees,  upon  the  north  side  of 
the  first-named  street,  a  row  of  small  shops,  gradually  dimin- 
ishing in  depth,  till  they  terminate  almost  in  a  point  at  the 
corner  of  Pearl  Street.  Through  the  windows  of  these  dimin- 
utive structures  one  can  catch  a  glimpse  of  a  sickly  looking 
tree  or  two  in  an  interior  enclosure,  and  is  apt  to  wonder  at 
this  bit  of  rus  in  urbe  at  such  a  spot.  Beyond  the  diagonal 
line  which  marks  the  north  side  of  these  shops,  a  gated  alley- 
way and  stairs  of  correspondingly  diminutive  size  leads  to  some 
mysterious  region  within,  which  would  seem  to  be  perforce 
a  closed  district  to  all  individuals  of  a  corpulent  habit. 
Many  persons  have  doubtless  wondered  at  this  odd  nook,  so 
much  of  the  character  of  those  which  Charles  Dickens  delighted 
in  for  the  scenes  of  his  novels ;  but  it  is  safe  to  say  that  very 
few  indeed  have  recognized  in  the  line  of  these  buildings  one 
of  the  oldest  landmarks  in  New  York,  or  have  known  that  it 
marked  the  north  side  of  the  lane  which  once  led  from  the 


310     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


river  shore  up  the  hill  to  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven's  ancient 
bouwery  house. 

Standing,  about  the  year  1655,  at  the  junction  of  this  lane 
with  the  river  road,  —  or  at  the  corner  of  the  modern  John  and 
Pearl  streets,  —  and  looking  up  the  broad,  grassy  lane  (of 
nearly  the  width  of  the  present  John  Street),  one  saw  before 
him  at  the  top  of  a  moderate  ascent,  a  low-roofed  Dutch  farm- 
house, with  its  stoep,  its  swinging  half-doors,  its  small-paned 
and  heavy-shuttered  windows,  and  its  capacious  exterior 
chimneys ;  a  little  way  to  the  right  (or  east)  of  the  building, 
the  spectator  saw  its  outer  cellar,  partly  excavated  in  the  hill, 
and  partly  sodded  over.  Within  the  lane,  at  the  foot  of  the 
hill,  was  a  spring  or  well,  to  which  a  well-worn  path  led  down 
from  the  farmhouse.  On  the  left  of  the  lane,  and  occupying 
a  warm  southeastern  exposure  upon  the  slope  of  the  hill,  was  a 
garden  of  large  size,  —  probably  of  at  least  an  acre  in  area,  — 
the  site  of  which  is  now  traversed  by  the  modern  Piatt  Street. 
This  garden  appears  to  have  been  hired  by  the  West  India 
Company  after  the  disturbance  of  its  prior  garden  upon  the 
west  side  of  Broadway,  caused  by  the  erection  of  the  "  forti- 
fications "  in  1653.1  Back  of  this  garden  was  a  somewhat 
rough  hillock  used  for  pasturage  purposes  ;  along  its  wet  and 
springy  sides  the  common  celandine  displayed  its  yellow 
flowers  thickly ;  this  plant  was  called  by  the  Dutch  the  gouwe, 
and  the  hill  became  known  as  the  Gouwenberg,  which  name 
was  in  the  course  of  time  corrupted  by  the  English  into 
Golden  Hill,  from  which  the  present  irregular  street  called 
Gold  Street  took  its  origin.  The  lower  portion  of  that  street 
appears  to  have  been  originally  a  lane  giving  access  from  Maagde 
Paetje,  or  Maiden  Lane,  to  the  pasture  field  just  spoken  of. 

To  the  north  and  east  of  the  bouwery  house,  which  must 
have  stood  just  about  at  the  northwestern  angle  of  the  present 
John  and  Cliff  streets,  lay  its  orchard,  apparently  of  two  or 
three  acres  in  area ;  twenty -five  years  of  growth  in  a  new 
soil  must  have  given  its  trees  a  fair  size  at  the  period  of  our 

1  In  1656,  lots  upon  the  modem  Pearl  Street  at  that  point  are  bounded  on  the 
north  "  by  the  clapboards  of  the  Company's  garden." 


« 


VAN  TIENHOVEN'S  LANE 


311 


survey ;  and  to  the  Dutch  traveller,  passing  by  on  his  way  to 
the  Long  Island  ferry,  these  trees  on  the  hill  above  him,  white 
with  their  fragrant  blossoms  in  May,  or  loaded  with  their  red 
and  yellow  fruit  in  autumn,  perhaps  called  to  mind  the 
orchards  of  Beveland,  or  of  Gooiland  in  the  old  country. 
Between  the  orchard  and  the  low  ground  of  the  Smits  Vly 
ran  the  farm  lane  above  described,  which,  turning  at  right 
angles  at  the  farmhouse,  skirted  the  brow  of  the  hill ;  as 
widened,  it  forms  the  modern  Cliff  Street,  between  John  and 
Fulton  streets.  At  a  point  which  corresponds  with  the  inter- 
section of  the  present  Cliff  and  Fulton  streets,  the  lane  of 
Van  Tienhoven's  farm  came  to  the  declivity  of  a  ravine  or 
gully  which  formed  the  division  between  this  farm  and  the 
land  which  belonged  at  the  time  of  our  survey  to  Thomas 
Hall,  but  which  is  better  known  from  its  later  owner,  William 
Beeckman,  as  the  Beeckman  estate ;  to  avoid  this  it  appears 
to  have  again  turned  westwards,  running  along  what  is  now 
Fulton  Street  as  far  as  the  turn  in  that  street,  at  the  inter- 
section of  the  gloomy-looking  cul-de-sac,  known  at  present 
as  Rider's  Alley;  thence  it  ran  into  the  lower  end  of  the 
present  Ann  Street,  which  it  followed  out  to  the  Heerewegh, 
or  the  modern  Broadway.  The  object  of  this  lane  was  evi- 
dently to  afford  means  of  access,  not  only  to  the  farther 
portions  of  Van  Tienhoven's  farm,  but  also  to  the  common 
pasture  occupying  the  present  Park  and  vicinity ;  although  its 
western  half  was  supposed  to  skirt  Van  Tienhoven's  farm, 
it  had  been  carelessly  laid  out  as  a  track  through  the  woods, 
and  this  fact  gave  rise  to  the  regulation  of  the  lane  (or  modern 
Ann  Street)  in  the  year  1642,  at  which  time  the  adjoining 
land  was  sold  by  the  West  India  Company  to  Govert  Loocker- 
mans  and  Cornells  Leendertsen.1 

1  The  deed  from  the  Director  and  Council  to  Loockermans  and  Leendertsen, 
dated  March  26,  1642,  contains  the  following  provisions  relating  to  this  lane: 
"  And  since  from  old  time  to  now,  between  the  land  which  we  sell  to  Loockermans 
and  Cornelis  Leendertsen,  and  the  farm  of  Cornelis  van  Tienhoven,  there  has  been 
a  wagon  road  running  to  the  Great  Highway  ;  it  is  expressly  ordered  that  as 
long  as  the  said  Loockermans  and  Leendertsen  shall  not  have  enclosed  their 
purchased  land  all  around,  sufficiently  tight  against  cattle,  then  Cornelis  van 


312     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


This  bouwery  is  spoken  of  as  belonging  to  Cornells  van 
Tienhoven  as  early  as  the  year  1640,  though  he  did  not  receive 
his  formal  ground-brief  or  patent  for  it  until  1644.  He  was 
not,  however,  the  first  owner  or  tenant  of  the  farm,  which  was 
in  all  probability  laid  out  at  a  very  early  date,  and  its  buildings, 
perhaps,  erected  by  the  West  India  Company. 

It  was  the  fashion  among  the  Dutch  at  this  time  to  give  to 
their  bouwerys  special  names,  and  many  such  examples  are 
found  in  New  Netherland,  sometimes  taken  from  Indian 
names,  as  Werpoes  or  Gamoenepa ;  at  others  from  some  topo- 
graphical or  other  peculiarity  connected  with  the  tract,  as 
Corlaers  Hoek,  the  Malle  Smits  Berg,  Deutel  Bay,  the 
Bassen  Bouwery,  Krom  Moeras,  the  Great  Bouwery,  the 
Otterspoor,  etc. ;  while  others  were  purely  fanciful  appellations, 
as  Zegendal  or  Vredendal :  in  this  manner  the  farm  we  are 
considering  had  received  at  a  very  early  day  the  name  of 
Wallenstein. 

It  might  at  first  sight  seem  strange  that  in  a  Protestant 
community  a  farm  should  have  been  thus  designated  in  honor, 
as  it  undoubtedly  was,  of  the  great  historical  personage  then 
recently  at  the  head  of  the  Romanist  party  of  Europe  and  of 
the  troops  of  the  German  Empire,  assembled  to  put  down  the 
Protestant  states  of  that  country.  It  must  not  be  forgotten, 
however,  that  during  the  last  portion  of  his  life  and  after  his 
assassination,  Wallenstein  came  to  be  popularly  regarded  as  a 
secret  friend  to  the  Protestant  cause,  whose  untimely  death 
alone  prevented  him  from  carrying  out  vast  and  mysterious 

Tienhoven  shall  have  the  privilege  of  using  the  aforesaid  road  heyond  his  pali- 
sades (as  having  been  a  road  for  a  length  of  time)  with  wagon  and  horses.  But 
when  the  said  land  have  been  sufficiently  cleared  by  Loockermans  and  Leendertsen 
and  shall  have  been  enclosed  with  a  sufficient  fence,  which  must  be  kept  up  by 
them,  then  the  wagon  road  shall  run  exactly  as  the  palisades  of  Tienhoven's 
land  stand,  of  which  the  said  Loockermans  and  Leendertsen  shall  give  one-half  of 
the  land  for  the  breadth  of  the  road ;  and  in  like  manner  Cornelis  van  Tienhoven 
shall  give  one-half  thereof,  which  aforesaid  road  shall  be  used  equally,  serving 
only  as  an  outlet  to  the  Long  Highway,  as  their  own  private  road."  This  lane 
was  only  laid  out  from  "  the  Long  Highway  "  towards  the  East  River  as  far  as 
a  point  at  the  intersection  of  the  present  Gold  and  Ann  streets,  Loockermans' 
and  Leendertsen's  land  terminating  at  that  place. 


THE  "  WALLENSTEIN  "  BOUWERY  313 


schemes  which  would  have  transformed  Germany  into  a  great 
Protestant  Empire.  Whether  this  belief  was  sufficiently  jus- 
tified by  facts  can  in  all  probability  never  be  determined.  It 
existed,  however,  in  the  minds  of  many,  and  in  the  year  1638 
we  find  Barent  Dircksen  Swart,  who  then  appears  to  have 
been  in  occupation  of  this  farm,  making  a  lease  for  six  years 
to  "  Cornells  Jacobsen,  the  elder,  from  Mertensdyk  and  Cor- 
nells Jacobsen,  the  younger,  his  brother,"  1  of  "  the  Bouwery 
named  Walensteyn,"  with  all  its  "  stock  of  cows,  heifers, 
mare,  stallions,  wagons,  etc."  The  yearly  rental  of  this  farm 
to  be  paid  by  the  lessees  was  to  be  one  hundred  and  fifty 
pounds  of  butter  and  fifty  schepels  of  grain,  whether  wheat, 
r}re,  or  barley.  Although  the  Indian  troubles  were  still  in  the 
future,  the  lessees  had  not  forgotten  the  unprotected  state  of 
the  farm,  for  they  continue  thus,  in  the  lease :  "  It  being  well 
understood,  should  the  house  come  to  be  burned  unfortunately 
either  by  hostile  Indians  or  others,  if  it  do  not  happen  by  the 
fault  of  the  lessees,  the  lessor  shall  stand  the  risk  of  the  in- 
cendiary." 

As  for  the  lessor  Barent  Dircksen,  he  himself  had  not  been 
the  first  occupant  of  the  "  Wallenstein  "  bouwery,  but  he  had 
purchased  it  from  Antony  Jansen  of  Vees,  from  whom  he 
received  a  deed  for  it  in  1639,  after  he  had  been  some  time  in 
actual  possession  of  the  farm.  The  tenure  of  the  bouwery 
both  by  Jansen  and  by  Dircksen  was,  it  is  quite  evident,  not 

1  The  writer  is  inclined  to  the  belief  that  this  second  Cornelis  Jacobsen  is  no 
other  than  the  Secretary  Cornelis  van  Tienhoven  himself,  whose  patronymic, 
hitherto  unknown,  would  thus  appear.  The  village  of  Mertensdyk,  or  St.  Martina- 
dyke,  is  only  about  four  miles  from  that  of  Tienhoven,  both  places  being  little 
more  than  that  distance  from  the  ancient  city  of  Utrecht  in  the  Netherlands. 
The  inconvenient  similarity  of  names  would  be  alone  sufficient  to  account  for  the 
disuse  of  his  family  name  by  Van  Tienhoven.  We  would  also  under  this  hy- 
pothesis have  a  ready  explanation  of  the  fact  that  the  farm  is  called  Van  Tien- 
hoven's  four  years  before  he  obtained  his  ground-brief  for  the  same,  and  while  it 
was  yet  apparently  under  the  claim  of  ownership  of  Barent  Dircksen.  It  may 
be  also  mentioned,  for  what  it  is  worth,  that  in  the  family  of  Cornelis  Jacobsen 
van  Mertensdyk,  better  known  in  the  records  of  the  colony  as  Cornelis  Jacobsen 
Stille,  occurs  the  not  very  common  name  of  Aefje  or  Effie  (Eva),  the  same  as 
that  of  Cornelis  van  Tienhoven's  sister,  the  wife  of  Pieter  Stoutenburgh. 


314     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


absolute,  but  merely  a  conditional  and  future  right  to  owner- 
ship, such  as  was  frequently  granted  to  the  colonists  by  the 
West  India  Company.  The  farmers  were  allowed  to  take 
possession  of  a  tract  —  sometimes  partly  improved,  and  some- 
times not  —  with  the  stipulation  that  upon  their  performing 
certain  conditions,  such  as  clearing  of  timber  and  bringing 
under  cultivation  a  certain  number  of  acres,  or  erecting  build- 
ings and  fences  of  a  specified  character  within  a  given  term, 
often  ten  years,  they  should  be  entitled  to  receive  an  absolute 
deed  or  ground-brief  for  the  property  from  the  company. 

Of  Barent  Dircksen,  the  lessor  of  this  farm,  not  much  is 
known,  except  that  he  was  a  middle-aged  man,  a  baker  by 
trade,  and  is  said  in  some  of  the  records  to  have  come  from 
"  Noorden,"  which  is  likely  enough  a  misspelling  of  the  old 
town  of  Naerden  on  the  Zuyder  Zee,  some  sixteen  or  seven- 
teen miles  north  of  Utrecht.  The  relations  between  him  and 
the  lessees  of  his  farm  do  not  appear  to  have  been  entirely 
harmonious,  for  upon  the  26th  of  August,  1642,  at  an  unusual 
period  of  the  year  for  the  execution  of  a  farm  lease,  and  con- 
siderably before  the  expiration  of  the  J acobsen  brothers'  lease, 
we  find  him  making  a  new  one  to  Bout  Francen,  of  Naerden, 
for  "  the  bouwery  called  Walestyn,"  at  an  annual  rental  of 
eighty  pounds  of  butter,  twenty  schepels  of  wheat,  and  forty 
of  rye.  This  transaction  seems  to  have  led  to  the  purchase  of 
Barent  Dircksen's  rights  in  the  farm  by  Secretary  Van  Tien- 
hoven,  for  upon  the  13th  of  May  of  the  next  year  1643,1 
Cornells  van  Tienhoven  executes  a  lease  to  Cornells  Jacobsen 
Stille  of  "  his  bouwery  in  the  Smits  Vly  "  for  three  or  six 

1  Dircksen  appears  upon  the  sale  of  this  farm  to  have  retired  from  active 
farming  operations,  for  a  time  at  least,  or  to  have  taken  refuge  in  the  town  from 
the  Indians.  In  the  fall  of  the  year  1643,  he  purchased  from  Harck  Syboutsen  a 
small  house  nearer  the  fort  for  the  sum  of  175  guilders  or  S70  (probably  above 
some  incumbrance),  "and  a  half-barrel  of  beer  as  a  treat  for  the  company."  The 
parties  do  not  seem  in  this  transaction  to  have  considered  the  carrying  out  of  the 
sale  as  of  vital  importance,  but  it  is  provided  with  great  care  in  the  instrument 
"  if  either  of  the  parties  backs  out  or  repents  of  the  sale,  he  shall  pay  a  half- 
barrel  of  beer."  Barent  Dircksen  died  before  1647,  in  which  year  we  find  his 
widow  married  to  Harman  Smeeman,  who  had  a  small  farm  on  the  East  River 
shore  adjoining  the  Stuyvesant  plantation. 


VAN  TTENHOVEN'S  FARM  315 


years  ;  Bout  Francen,  the  former  lessee,  having  been  provided 
with  a  lease  of  Johannes  la  Montagne's  bouwery  of  Vreden- 
dal  (at  the  north  end  of  the  present  Central  Park),  from 
which,  in  the  course  of  a  few  months,  he  was  routed  out  by 
the  Indians.  Van  Tienhoven's  lease  affords  some  curious 
particulars  of  the  condition  in  1643  of  this  tract  of  land  situ- 
ated between  the  modern  Maiden  Lane,  Ann  Street,  Broad- 
way, and  Pearl  Street,  and  now  so  densely  built  upon  with 
stores,  warehouses,  and  office  buildings  ;  its  fields  had  then 
just  been  "fenced  and  railed  in  a  proper  manner,"  but  por- 
tions of  it  were  still  open  and  covered  with  wood  or  brush,  for 
the  lessee  agrees  "  every  year  to  clear  a  piece  of  land  and  let  it 
lie  fallow;  any  land  added,  to  be  fenced  as  at  present."  The 
Secretary  further  agrees  to  build  a  hay  or  grain  barrack  upon 
the  farm  for  his  tenant. 

Cornells  Jacobsen  Stille  appears  to  have  remained  as  a 
tenant  in  the  occupation  of  this  farm  till  the  year  1647,  when 
he  removed  to  the  farm  known  as  "  Bouwery  Number  Six," 
which  he  had  purchased  of  the  West  India  Company,  and 
which  lay  between  the  present  Division  Street  and  the  East 
River.  It  was  in  the  same  year  that  Secretary  Van  Tien- 
hoven,  who  had  obtained  a  formal  ground-brief  for  his 
bouwery  from  Director-General  Kieft  three  years  before  that 
date,  built  the  house  upon  the  shore  road  which  has  already 
been  alluded  to  (ante,  page  308)  as  the  later  residence  of  the 
Secretary's  brother-in-law,  Jan  Vinje.  Either  in  this  house, 
or  in  the  farmhouse  on  the  hill,  the  Secretary  and  his  family 
may  have  dwelt  during  the  next  five  or  six  years,  and  in  the 
immediate  vicinity  he  seems  to  have  taken  some  interest  in 
establishing  several  of  his  relatives  by  marriage,  for  in  the 
year  1649  he  sold,  to  two  of  his  brothers-in-law,  Abraham 
Verplanck  and  Dirck  Volckertsen,  small  plots  of  ground  upon 
the  Shore  Road  in  the  northeastern  corner  of  his  farm  near 
the  intersection  of  the  present  Pearl  and  Fulton  streets, 
where,  with  one  or  two  other  persons,  they  built  a  small 
cluster  of  houses,  of  which  some  notice  will  be  taken  hereafter. 
In  1653,  however,  Van  Tienhoven  purchased  the  house  on 


316     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


't  Water,  or  the  modern  Pearl  Street,  next  to  the  old  Dutch 
church 1  which  thenceforth  became  his  residence ;  and  there  is 
no  evidence  that  the  bouwery  of  "  Wallenstein  "  was  ever 
again  the  dwelling-place  of  any  of  the  Secretary's  family, 
though  it  remained  in  their  possession,  and  evidently  occu- 
pied by  farmer  tenants  for  nearly  a  score  of  years  after  the 
death  or  disappearance  of  the  Secretary  in  1656. 

Some  of  the  subsequent  changes  coming  to  this  property 
may  be  not  without  interest.  In  1671  the  representatives  of 
the  estates  of  Van  Tienhoven  and  of  his  wife  sold  the  farm 
to  one  Jan  Smedes,  who  held  it  a  few  years ;  but  in  1675, 
Smedes  sold  the  rear  fields  of  the  farm,  extending  to  Broad- 
way from  a  line  parallel  with  the  modern  Gold  Street,  and 
about  one  hundred  feet  west  of  it,  to  Coenrad  Ten  Eyck, 
Carsten  Luersen,  John  Harpendinck,  and  Jacob  Abrahamsen, 
four  shoemakers  and  tanners  of  the  town,  who  desired  to 
establish  their  tan-pits  in  the  low  ground  along  Maiden  Lane, 
at  the  southeastern  angle  of  their  purchase.  The  land  used 
for  this  purpose  was  of  but  small  extent,  and  the  balance  of 
the  tract  of  seventeen  acres,  after  deducting  certain  small  gar- 
den plots  along  Broadway,  was  used  for  pasturage  purposes 
for  about  twenty  years,  forming  the  well-known  topographical 
feature  of  the  early  town,  known  as  the  "  Shoemakers'  Field." 
In  1696,  the  present  streets  were  run  through  this  tract ;  it 
was  divided  into  a  number  of  lots  which  were  distributed 
among  the  partners  in  the  purchase,  and  were  slowly  sold  off 
by  them  for  small  prices,  averaging  perhaps  $100  each,  of  the 
present  currency. 

The  old  bouwery  house,  with  about  five  or  six  acres  of 
land,  was  sold  by  Smedes  to  Hendrick  Rycken,  a  blacksmith, 
in  1677  ;  and  four  years  later  Rycken  parted  with  the  property 
to  a  man,  who,  with  his  family,  is  perhaps  more  closely  asso- 
ciated with  the  place  than  any  of  its  former  owners.2  This 

1  See  ante,  page  55,  etc. 

2  There  was  a  tradition,  some  time  ago,  among  the  members  of  the  Riker 
family,  that  their  ancestor  sold  this  place  out  of  disgust  at  the  snakes  then  in- 
festing the  wet  grounds  about  the  Gouwenberg  and  Smits  Vly.    As,  however,  he 


THE  VANDERCLYFF  FAMILY 


31T 


was  Dirck  Jansen  Vanderclyff,  who  appears  to  have  come 
from  the  village  of  Alphen,  a  few  miles  southeast  of  the 
swamp-environed  fortress  of  Breda,  in  Brabant.  At  New 
York,  he  married  Geesje,  the  daughter  of  Hendrick  Willemsen, 
a  baker  who  long  resided  at  the  northwest  corner  of  the  pres- 
ent Bridge  and  Broad  streets.  In  the  old  farmhouse  this 
family  resided  for  many  years,  and  its  broad  lane  leading  down 
the  hill  to  the  waterside  must  have  been  well  trodden  by  the 
eight  or  ten  small  Vanderclyff s,  or  "  Van  Cleefs,"  as  they 
came  to  be  called.  Before  1695,  Dirck  Vanderclyff  had  died, 
and  his  energetic  widow  set  about  selling  off  her  property 
here,  in  lots.  The  old  farm  lane  running  along  the  brow  of 
the  hill  parallel  with  the  river  road  formed  one  of  her  streets, 
and  its  turn  at  right  angles  formed  another  one  which  she 
designed  to  lead  into  one  of  the  new  streets  which  the  Shoe- 
makers were  laying  out,  at  about  this  time,  on  their  adjoining 
property.  Geesje  was  an  American-born  woman,  but  she  had 
a  great  admiration  for  her  father's  country,  and  for  its  great 
Stadtholder,  who  was  then  filling  so  prominent  a  place  in  the 
eyes  of  the  world,  —  William  of  Nassau,  Prince  of  Orange. 
The  Shoemakers,  upon  their  adjoining  property,  had  named 
one  of  their  streets  William  Street,  but  the  rest  of  the  Stadt- 
holder's  title  was  open  to  Geesje,  and  she  called  the  lane  at 
the  top  of  the  hill  —  scarcely  four  hundred  feet  in  length  — 
Orange  Street,  while  the  other,  of  not  much  greater  length, 
she  designated  Nassau  Street.  In  course  of  time  those  names 
came  to  be  applied  to  streets  of  greater  length  and  of  more 
importance,  in  other  parts  of  the  town.  For  want  of  a  gen- 
erally accepted  name,  her  "  Orange  Street "  was  generally 
known  as  Vanderclyff' s,  or  Van  Cleefs  Street,  whence  its 
modem  name  of  Cliff  Street,  while  "  Nassau  Street  "  became 
merged  in  Fair  Street,  of  the  "  Shoemaker's  Pasture,"  now 
Fulton  Street. 

In  the  old  farmhouse  here  Geesje  Vanderclyff  lived  many 
years,  —  she  resided  here  certainly  as  late  as  1711,  —  and  Mr. 

purchased  the  property  for  2900  guilders  and  sold  for  5000  guilders,  —  a  neat 
advance  for  those  days,  —  the  snake  story  is  not  needed  to  explain  the  sale. 


318     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


D.  T.  Valentine  has  found  some  reason  to  believe  that  she  kept 
a  tavern  here.  Her  husband,  Dirck,  undoubtedly  did,  during 
his  lifetime,  establish  a  place  of  resort  at  u  The  Orchard  ;  " 
and  it  was  here,  in  1682,  that  James  Graham,  afterwards 
Recorder  of  the  City,  and  Attorney-General  of  the  province, 
was  mysteriously  stabbed,  in  the  midst  of  a  social  party  and 
apparently  without  cause,  by  Captain  Baxter,  an  English 
officer  whom  he  was  entertaining,  —  the  wound,  however,  not 
proving  very  serious.  Of  Geesje's  large  family,  six  daughters 
reached  years  of  maturity,  and  among  them  was  divided  what 
remained  of  the  place  at  their  mother's  death.  Most  of  them 
had  married  persons  of  English  descent,  and  the  Dutch  charac- 
teristics of  the  Vanderclyffs  soon  disappeared.1 

It  may  be  noted  that  upon  land  immediately  adjoining  the 
Vanderclyff  farmhouse,  and  in  all  probability  upon  a  portion 
of  what  had  been  its  barnyard,  was  erected  at  some  time 
within  the  period  from  1724  to  1728  the  first  church  building 
of  the  Baptists  in  New  York  City.  It  had  a  very  ephemeral 
existence  as  a  church  edifice,  being  claimed  as  private  prop- 
erty and  soon  closed  by  one  of  its  first  trustees.  It  appears, 
however,  as  late  as  upon  the  map  of  1755  as  the  "  Baptist 
Meeting/'  2 

1  Of  the  children  of  Dirck  and  Geesje  Vanderclyff,  Cornelia  was  married  to 
Benjamin  Norwood  in  1 693  ;  Catharine  to  John  Lowry  or  Loring,  in  or  about 
1694 ;  Lysbet  to  John  Bruce  in  1696  ;  Margaretha  to  Peter  Burtell,  or  Brutell,  in 
1704;  Femmetje,'or  Euphemia,  to  Andries  Hardenbrook  in  1709;  Maria,  a  twin 
daughter,  grew  to  maturity,  but  does  not  appear  to  have  married. 

2  See  manuscript  of  Rev.  Morgan  Edwards  as  cited  by  Rev.  Wm.  Parkinson  in 
his  sketch  of  the  "  Origin  of  the  First  Baptist  Church  in  the  City  of  New  York." 


CHAPTER  XXIII 


THE  HAMLET  AT  THE  FERRY.— LAMBERT  MOLL.  — HAG E 
BRUYNSEN,  THE  SWEDE.  —  DIRCK  VOLCKERTSEN  AND 
HIS  BROTHER-IN-LAW,  ABRAHAM  VERPLANCK.  —  THOMAS 
HALL'S  PLACE 

By  hedge-row  elms,  on  hillocks  green, 
Right  against  the  Eastern  gate, 
Where  the  great  sun  begins  his  State, 
Robed  in  flames,  and  amber  light 
The  clouds  in  thousand  liveries  dight. 

Milton  :  "  L'Allegro." 

FROM  his  farmhouse  on  the  hill,  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven 
could  look  down  upon  a  row  of  five  houses  standing  in 
close  proximity  to  one  another  in  the  Smits  Vly,  and  at  the 
southeastern  angle  of  his  estate.  These  buildings,  together 
with  the  neighboring  house  of  Thomas  Hall,  the  warehouse 
of  Isaac  Allerton,  and  the  ferry-house  of  Eghbert  van  Borsum, 
formed  a  small  hamlet  often  spoken  of  simply  as  "The 
Ferry." 

In  the  summer  of  1649,  the  Secretary  had  sold  three  plots 
of  ground  upon  the  river  road,  and  near  the  intersection  of 
the  modem  Pearl  and  Fulton  streets,  to  two  of  his  brothers- 
in-law,  Abraham  Verplanck  and  Dirck  Volckertsen,  and  to 
one  Lambert  Huybertsen.  These  plots  contained  nearly  half 
an  acre  each,  and  extended  back  from  the  river  road  to  the 
high  ground  in  their  rear.  Volckertsen  soon  subdivided  his 
parcel,  and  sold  to  persons  who  built  upon  their  plots,  so  that 
the  previously  isolated  state  of  the  Secretary's  farmhouse  was 
somewhat  relieved. 

The  first  of  these  buildings,  going  towards  the  ferry,  at  the 
time  of  our  survey,  was  the  house  of  Lambert  Huybertsen 


320     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


Moll,  to  whom  sometimes  the  designation  of  "klomp,"  or 
wooden  shoe,  was  given,  —  probably  either  from  his  wearing 
or  manufacturing  those  useful  articles.  His  house  seems  to 
have  stood  about  upon  the  site  of  the  present  building,  No. 
253  Pearl  Street,  and  was  built,  in  all  probability,  about  the 
time  of  his  acquiring  the  land  in  1649.  He  seems  to  have 
brought  his  family  with  him  from  the  Netherlands,  though  from 
what  particular  place  is  uncertain,  one  of  his  sons,  Hendrick, 
appearing  in  the  records  as  of  Amsterdam,  and  another, 
Huybert,  of  Aernhem,  on  the  lower  Rhine.  Of  Lambert's 
life  in  New  Amsterdam  not  much  is  known.  He  was  weak 
enough,  on  one  occasion,  to  appear  with  "  just  a  drappie  in 
the  e'e  "  before  the  Court  of  Burgomasters,  at  the  Stadt 
Huys,  during  the  progress  of  a  suit  by  him  against  Isaac  Kip ; 
the  indignant  court  promptly  vindicated  its  outraged  dignity 
by  fining  the  offender  the  sum  of  six  guilders,  equivalent  to 
two  dollars  and  forty  cents,  and  turning  him  out  of  its 
presence.  Nevertheless,  Lambert  appears  to  have  been  a  man 
of  a  humane  and  kindly  disposition.  There  is  some  evidence 
that  he  followed  the  occupation  of  a  boat-builder  or  boatman,1 
and  upon  the  occurrence  of  the  Indian  panic  of  1655  he  loaned 
one  of  his  scows  to  the  frightened  inhabitants  of  Gamoenepa, 
or  Communipaw,  across  the  North  River,  for  the  purpose  of 
ferrying  over  their  cattle  to  Manhattan  Island.  The  refugees 
gave  themselves,  upon  this  occasion,  no  concern  about  return- 
ing the  vessel  to  its  owner,  but  simply  abandoned  it,  and 
Lambert  experienced  much  trouble  in  recovering  its  posses- 
sion. Lambert  Huybertsen  seems  to  have  resided  in  this 
house  until  his  death,  which  took  place  some  time  before  the 
year  1676,  at  which  period  the  property  was  sold  to  Elias 
Puddington,  or  Purington,  a  prominent  shipwright  in  the 
early  da}^s  of  the  English  regime.2 

1  In  1G56  Lambert  Moll  was  ordered  by  the  Council  to  make  an  examination 
and  report  upon  the  condition  of  a  vessel  from  Virginia  then  in  the  harbor. 

2  Lambert  Huybertsen  and  his  son  Reyer  were  the  owners  of  a  tract  of  land 
embracing  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  acres,  which  extended  along  the  East  River 
from  the  marshes  of  the  Wallabout  nearly  to  the  present  North  First  Street,  in 


DIRCK  VOLCKERTSEN 


321 


Closely  adjoining  the  house  of  Lambert  Huybertsen,  in 
an  easterly  direction,  and  apparently  upon  the  site  of  No. 
255  Pearl  Street,  was  the  small  house  of  Hage  (sometimes 
called  Hacke,  and  sometimes  Auke)  Bruynsen,  a  Swede,  whom 
we  find  at  New  Amsterdam  in  the  early  part  of  1653,  when 
he  married  Anneken  Jans,  a  Danish  woman  from  Holstein. 
In  the  fall  of  the  same  year  he  purchased  a  small  slip  of 
ground  here  from  Dirck  Volckertsen,  and  seems  to  have  built 
upon  it  at  once.  Bruynsen  was  from  the  Province  of  Sma- 
land  in  the  southern  part  of  Sweden ;  it  was  at  the  head  of 
the  famous  Smaland  Cavalry  that  Gustavus  Adolphus,  King 
of  Sweden,  met  his  death  at  Liitzen,  in  1632  ;  and  for  aught 
we  know,  Bruynsen,  as  a  trooper  in  the  Swedish  squadrons, 
may  have  confronted  his  neighbor,  Augustyn  Heermans, 
in  Wallenstein's  army,  on  that  memorable  day.  Bruynsen 
died  about  the  year  1668,  and  two  years  later  his  house  A\as 
sold  to  one  Jacob  Hellekers,  familiarly  known  as  "  black 
Jacob."  The  house  is  of  some  interest,  as  the  lodging-place, 
in  1679,  of  the  Labadist  missionaries,  Danker  and  Sluyter, 
whose  interesting  journal  of  their  experiences  in  the  New 
World  was  brought  to  light  by  Hon.  Henry  C.  Murphy  some 
years  ago.1 

Next  beyond  the  house  of  Hage  Bruynsen  stood,  in  1655, 
the  residence  of  Dirck  Volckertsen,  the  brother-in-law  of 
Secretary  Van  Tienhoven,  —  not  his  original  house  at  this 
place,  built  upon  his  acquiring  the  land  in  1649  from  the 
Secretary,  but  a  later  one,  which  he  appears  to  have  built  for 
himself  about  1651,  at  which  time  he  had  sold  his  first  house 
to  Roeloff  Teunissen.  Dirck  Volckertsen,  at  the  time  of  our 
survey,  was  in  the  later  years  of  his  life,  and  was  in  all  prob- 
ability at  this  time,  the  earliest  European  settler  living  in 
the  colony.  In  considering  him,  we  are  going  back  to  the 
days  of  the  blockhouse  and  trading-post,  with  which  he  must 

Brooklyn,  thus  covering  about  one-half  of  the  modern  Williamsburgh.  Lambert's 
patent  was  acquired  as  early  as  1641.  Within  twenty  or  twenty-five  years, 
however,  both  father  and  son  had  disposed  of  their  holdings  on  Long  Island. 

1  See  the  translated  Journal  in  Vol.  I.,  Memoirs  Long  Island  Historical 
Society. 

21 


322     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


have  been  familiar.  In  the  year  1621  we  find  Dirck  Volckert- 
sen  and  Cornelis  Volckertsen  (who  was  in  all  probability  his 
brother),  together  with  certain  other  persons,  presenting  a 
petition  to  the  States-General  of  the  Netherlands,  praying  for 
permission  to  send  a  ship  over  to  New  Netherland,  "  with 
all  sorts  of  permitted  merchandise,"  and  it  was,  in  all  proba- 
bility, in  pursuance  of  this  design  that  the  two  Volckertsens 
came  over  to  the  colony.  These  men,  at  the  period  of  their 
mercantile  venture,  were  residents  of  Hoorn,  on  the  peninsula 
of  North  Holland,  but  they  appear  to  have  been  Danes,  or 
Scandinavians  by  birth,1  and  Dirck  was  closely  associated 
in  New  Netherland  with  the  Swedes  and  Norwegians  in  the 
colony.  How  the  Volckertsens  spent  their  earlier  years  in 
New  Netherland  we  do  not  know.  When  they  are  first  met 
with  in  the  records  of  the  colony,  about  1644,  Cornelis  was 
residing  upon  the  east  side  of  the  Heerewegh,  or  Broadway, 
upon  a  grant  which  he  had  obtained  there  a  short  time  before, 
and  through  which  the  modern  Exchange  Place  runs.  Here 
he  seems  to  have  kept  a  tavern  for  a  short  time,  but  he  died 
before  1650,  in  which  year  his  widow  married  Jan  Peeck,  of 
whom  previous  mention  has  been  made.2 

Dirck  at  this  time  was  living  apparently  in  the  house  after- 
wards known  as  Sergeant  Litscho's  tavern,  upon  the  road 
along  the  East  River,  with  which  he  owned  a  small  plot  of 
land.  He  had  married,  before  1632,  Christina,  daughter  of 
Guillaume  Vigne,  or  Willem  Vinje,  and  step-daughter  of  Jan 
Damen,  but  he  does  not  appear  to  have  been  on  the  best  of 
terms  with  his  wife's  family,  and  especially  with  his  step- 
father, Jan  Damen.  In  1645  he  disposed  of  his  place  along 
the  river  road ;  but  four  years  later,  having  obtained  a  grant 
of  land  from  his  brother-in-law,  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven,  at 
the  place  in  the  Smits  Vly  at  which  we  have  now  arrived, 

1  The  name  "  Volckertsen  "  seems  to  be  a  refinement  by  the  Dutch  upon 
"  Holgersen,"  by  which  name  Dirck  is  occasionally  designated.  Holger,  or  Ogier, 
the  Dane,  living  in  the  time  of  Charlemagne,  is  a  great  legendary  hero  of  Den- 
mark, and  it  was  possibly  to  the  story  of  his  ghost,  which  haunted  the  Castle  of 
Elsinore,  that  we  owe  Shakespeare's  "  Hamlet." 

2  See  ante,  page  301. 


THE  NORMAN'S  KILL 


323 


he  built  a  house  which  must  have  stood  upon  the  whole  or  a 
part  of  the  site  of  the  modern  building,  No.  259  Pearl  Street. 

This,  with  one-half  of  his  garden  of  ninety-two  feet  front, 
extending  back  something  over  two  hundred  feet  to  the  hill 
upon  which  the  farmhouse  of  his  brother-in-law  stood,  he 
disposed  of  within  a  couple  of  years  to  a  Swedish  sea  captain 
named  Roeloff  Teunissen,  as  above  stated,  and  he  then 
erected  upon  the  site  of  the  present  building,  No.  257  Pearl 
Street,  the  house  which  he  occupied  at  the  time  of  our  survey. 

In  1645  Dirck  Volckertsen  received  a  patent  for  the  lands 
along  the  East  River,  which  form  the  modern  Greenpoint; 
from  the  appellation  of  w  The  Norman  "  frequently  given  to 
him,  the  kill  on  the  south  side  of  his  grant,  known  in  late 
times  as  the  Bushwick  Creek,  was  in  the  seventeenth  century 
usually  spoken  of  as  the  Norman's  Kill.  Through  this  tract 
of  land  a  long  lane  or  wood  road  stretched  up  from  the  river 
through  the  forest  to  the  spot  where,  in  later  years,  the  ham- 
let of  Bushwick  grew  up.  Volckertsen  seems  to  have  culti- 
vated a  portion  of  this  tract,  probably  residing  at  his  house  in 
the  Smits  Vly,  and  like  many  of  the  other  farmers  along  the 
shore,  sailing  to  and  from  the  scene  of  his  agricultural  labors, 
with  his  sons  and  work  hands.  In  1653  he  conveyed  to 
Jacob  Haie,  or  Haes,  who  appears  to  have  been  the  husband 
of  his  daughter,  Christina,  that  portion  of  the  tract  lying 
north  of  the  lane  just  mentioned,  but  Haes  had  hardly  estab- 
lished himself  here,  when  in  the  fall  of  1655,  his  house  was 
burned  by  the  Indians,  as  has  been  already  mentioned.1 
After  the  cessation  of  the  Indian  troubles,  Dirck  Volckertsen 
appears  to  have  removed  to  his  farm  at  the  Norman's  Kill,  for 
in  a  deed  of  1661  he  describes  himself  as  of  "  Bushwyk. " 
The  entire  tract  eventually  came  into  the  hands  of  the  Mese- 
role  family,  descendants  of  Dirck's  daughter  Christina,  who 
held  it  until  recent  years,  and  may  still  hold  some  portions  of 
it. 

The  occupant  of  Dirck  Volckertsen's  original  house  upon 
the  parcel  of  ground  in  the  Smits  Vly,  who  was  still  his 

1  See  ante,  page  169. 


324     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


neighbor  at  the  time  of  our  survey,  was,  as  has  been  stated, 
one  Roeloff  Teunissen.  This  man  came  from  where  Gothen- 
burg looks  out  from  among  its  bare  hills  of  gray  granite 
upon  the  blue  waters  of  the  broad  Cattegat  which  separates 
Sweden  from  Denmark.  The  old  city  of  the  Goths  was  then, 
as  now,  one  of  the  principal  seaports  of  Sweden,  and,  like 
many  of  its  natives,  RoelofT  Teunissen  was  a  seafaring  man. 
In  1651  he  had  found  employment  in  the  Dutch  service,  and 
was  then  "  Master  of  the  ship  the  Emperor  Charles."  He  re- 
sided here  at  his  house  in  the  Smits  Vly  till  1657,  when  he 
sold  the  premises  to  Jan  Hendricks  Steelman. 

The  remaining  house  in  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven's  hamlet 
near  "  The  Ferry  "  was,  in  1G55,  that  of  his  brother-in-law, 
Abraham  Isaacsen  Verplanck.  This  stood  in  a  large  garden, 
of  about  ninety  feet  front  by  two  hundred  feet  in  depth,  and 
its  site  is  believed  to  be  covered  by  the  modern  Fulton 
Street.1  Verplanck  was  one  of  the  earliest  colonists,  and  before 
1632  had  married  Maria,  the  eldest  daughter  of  Willem  Vinje, 
and  sister  of  Rachel,  the  Secretary's  wife,  and  of  Christina, 
the  wife  of  Dirck  Volckertsen.  As  to  the  particular  occupa- 
tion of  Verplanck  we  have  but  little  information:  as  early 
as  1638  he  had  acquired  a  patent  for  the  tract  across  the 
North  River,  called  Pouwells  Hoek,  upon  which  the  modern 
Jersey  City  stands,  but  he  himself  does  not  appear  to  have 
been  engaged  in  farming  operations.  There  are  evidences 
that  he  was  not  a  popular  man  in  the  community,  for  in  1642 
he  incurred  the  wrath  of  the  Director  and  Council  by  defi- 
antly tearing  down  one  of  the  placards  of  ordinances  posted 
by  them.  For  this  offence,  enhanced  by  remarks  considered 
"  slanderous  "  by  the  authorities,  the  rather  severe  fine  of  300 
guilders,  or  about  SI 20,  was  imposed  on  him.  On  the  other 
hand,  his  conduct  in  the  following  year  in  signing,  with  his 
wife's  step-father,  Jan  Damen,  and  with  Maryn  Adriaensen, 
the  petition  for  leave  to  attack  the  Wechquaskeek  Indians 
brought  him  into  great  odium  among  the  colonists,  who  con- 

1  This  portion  of  Fulton  Street  was  only  opened  through  from  Cliff  Street 
to  the  East  River  a  few  years  before  1817. 


THOMAS  HALL 


325 


sidered  him  as  one  of  those  who  were  directly  responsible  for 
the  devastations  committed  by  the  natives  in  retaliation  for 
the  massacre  by  the  Dutch.  Verplanck  lived  for  many  years 
after  he  had  built  his  house  in  the  Smit's  Vly  in  1649,  but 
whether  he  resided  here  constantly  is  not  known,  as  there 
are  indications  that  a  portion  of  his  time  was  spent  at  Fort 
Orange,  or  Albany. 

Looking  eastward  from  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven's  farm- 
house near  the  East  River  across  a  ravine,  which  marked  the 
boundary  of  his  farm,  and  which  traversed  the  space  between 
the  modern  Fulton  and  Beekman  streets,  one  could  see  a 
small  isolated  hillock,  containing  some  eight  or  nine  acres  of 
land,  which  fell  away,  upon  its  farther  side,  into  a  hollow  of 
swampy  woodland,  the  site  of  which  is  still  known  by  the 
name  of  "  The  Swamp,"  though  the  oaks  and  maples,  the  alders 
and  swamp  blackberries,  of  the  Secretary's  time  have  long 
since  given  way  to  dingy  warehouses  crammed  with  hides 
and  leather,  the  odors  of  which  fill  the  air  where  perhaps  the 
Secretary  may  have  sniffed  the  fragrance  of  the  wild  grape. 

This  hillock  (which  is  plainly  discernible  in  the  modern 
grade  of  Pearl  Street,  the  ancient  river  road),  pushing  for- 
wards towards  the  East  River,  put  an  end  to  the  low  grounds 
of  the  Smits  Vly,  which  extended  from  the  palisades  at  Wall 
Street  to  this  point.  Upon  the  hill,  at  a  spot  which  has  not 
been  accurately  determined,  but  which  must  have  been  inter- 
mediate between  the  present  Beekman  and  Ferry  streets, 
stood,  in  1655,  the  "house,  brew-house,  mill-house,  with 
a  horse-mill  and  other  buildings  "  of  the  Secretary's  neigh- 
bor, the  Englishman  Thomas  Hall.  Back  of  the  buildings, 
upon  ground  extending  from  the  modern  Cliff  Street  to  Gold 
Street,  was  a  goodly  orchard,  above  which  towered  up,  at  its 
southwest  corner,  and  just  at  the  intersection  of  the  modern 
Ann  and  Gold  streets,  the  landmark  long  known  as  "  The 
Great  Tree."  On  the  south  side  of  the  buildings,  upon 
ground  sloping  towards  the  Smits  Vly  and  the  modern  Fulton 
Street,  was  a  large  garden.  At  the  time  of  our  survey,  this 
property  had  been  very  recently  acquired  by  Thomas  Hall, 


326     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


but  it  had  a  history  extending  some  years  back  into  the  earlier 
days  of  the  colony.  As  early  as  1638,  this  parcel  of  land  was 
in  the  possession  of  Philip  du  Trieux  (or  De  Truy,  as  the 
Dutch  generally  designated  him),  who  was  long  the  Court 
"  Messenger,"  or  marshal,  at  New  Amsterdam.  Philip  was 
one  of  the  older  residents,  and  seems  to  have  been  one  of  the 
first,  if  not  the  very  first  to  build  upon  the  Bever  Graft,  or  the 
modern  Beaver  Street,  where  for  a  number  of  years  he  had  a 
house.  In  1640  he  received  his  ground-brief  or  patent  for 
the  land  adjoining  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven's  farm,  and 
seems  to  have  then  resided  upon  it,  for  about  that  time  he 
with  several  others  of  that  vicinity  make  a  formal  contract 
with  Claes  Groen  and  Pieter  Lievesen  for  the  herding  of 
their  goats  for  a  whole  year,  at  the  munificent  sum  of  one 
guilder,  or  about  forty  cents  per  year  for  each  goat.  This 
important  document  is  entered  with  much  formality  upon  the 
Register  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Council. 

Philip  de  Truy  had  died  some  time  before  1653 :  he 
seems  to  have  leased  or  to  have  contracted  to  sell  this  place 
to  Nicholas  Stilwel,  for  in  1649  we  find  the  latter  promising 
to  furnish  one  Henry  Bresar  with  "  palisades  "  enough  to 
fence  the  premises  along  the  river  road,  and  within  two  years 
to  furnish  enough  more  to  fence  the  other  sides  of  the  land, 
in  consideration  of  which,  Bresar  acknowledges  that  "  he  has 
taken  off  the  hands  of  Nicolaes  Stillwell  the  land  and  dwell- 
ing house  "  in  question.  Bresar  seems  to  have  remained  in 
possession  of  the  place  till  about  the  year  1653,  when  he  built 
a  new  house  a  short  distance  beyond  the  ferry,  on  some  land 
which  he  had  acquired  there,  and  the  former  dwelling-house 
of  Philip  de  Truy,  after  one  or  two  intermediate  changes, 
was  bought,  in  August,  1654,  by  Thomas  Hall. 

This  man,  who  was  for  nearly  thirty-five  years  a  prominent 
character  at  New  Amsterdam,  possesses  a  peculiar  interest  to 
us  as  having  been  with  his  partner,  George  Holmes,  beyond 
any  reasonable  doubt  the  first  English  settlers  in  the  present 
State  of  New  York ;  that  honor  has  been  claimed  for  Lion 
Gardiner,  who  acquired  Gardiner's  Island  at  the  eastern  end 
of  Long  Island,  in  1639 ;  but  in  1638  Thomas  Hall  with 


HALL'S  TOBACCO  PLANTATION  327 


Holmes  was  in  occupation  of  ex-Director  Van  Twiller's 
tobacco  plantation  at  Sapokanican  near  the  later  Greenwich 
village,  and  in  all  probability  they  had  been  there  for  at  least 
a  year  or  two  before  that  date. 

Hall,  who  was  a  native  of  Gloucestershire  in  the  west  of 
England,  appears  to  have  been  one  of  a  little  band  of  colonists 
who,  after  a  short  sojourn  in  New  England,  concluded  to 
establish  themselves,  without  seeking  any  one's  permission, 
in  the  lands  claimed  by  the  Dutch  along  the  Delaware  River. 
Made  prisoners  and  brought  to  New  Amsterdam  in  1635, 
several  of  these  colonists  determined  to  become  subjects  of 
the  Dutch  and  to  establish  themselves  in  New  Amsterdam, 
and  among  these,  as  it  is  supposed,  were  both  Hall  and 
Holmes.  In  some  way  these  men,  though  young,  —  Hall  was 
born  about  in  the  year  1614,  —  had  become  familiar  with  the 
cultivation  and  curing  of  tobacco,  and  they  accordingly 
commenced  operations  in  partnership  as  tobacco-planters,  by 
leasing  Director  Van  Twiller's  large  bouwery,  one  of  the 
best  on  the  island.  By  1639,  they  had  been  so  successful 
that  they  determined  to  set  up  a  plantation  of  their  own  on 
some  suitable  ground  near  the  East  River  shore,  at  what  was 
called  Deutel  Bay  near  the  present  Forty-sixth  Street.  In 
the  next  year  the  partners  separated,  Hall  selling  out  for  six- 
teen hundred  pounds  of  tobacco  his  interest  in  the  Deutel 
Bay  farm  to  Holmes,  who  thereupon  established  himself  upon 
that  farm,  which  remained  long  in  the  possession  of  him  and 
of  his  descendants. 

Thomas  Hall  remained  till  the  beginning  of  1647  upon  ex- 
Director  Van  Twiller's  plantation.  When  he  first  came  to 
New  Netherland  he  was  an  unmarried  man,  but  in  1641  he 
married  a  distressed  English  widow  who  had  found  herself 
in  the  painful  position  of  being  left  destitute  and  alone  in  a 
strange  land  and  among  a  foreign  people.  This  was  Anna 
Mitford,  from  Bristol,  not  very  far  from  the  scenes  of  Hall's 
youth.  She  had  been  the  wife  of  William  Quick,  who  had 
recently  died  very  poor.  In  a  pathetic  petition  which  she 
made  to  the  Director  and  Council  soon  after  her  husband's 
death  she  shows  that  she  "  is  an  afflicted  widow,  in  a  strange 


328     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


land,  without  any  means  or  effects  to  satisfy  the  creditors ; 
yea,  even  knows  not  where  to  lay  her  head,  or  to  obtain 
a  morsel  of  bread,"  —  she  therefore  abandons  all  the  very 
humble  effects  of  her  husband  to  his  creditors.  Her  mar- 
riage with  Thomas  Hall  seems  to  have  been  a  fortunate  one, 
and  she  survived  him  after  thirty  years  of  married  life,  most 
of  which  were  spent  at  the  house  upon  the  river  road  to 
which  we  have  just  alluded. 

For  many  years  Thomas  Hall  carried  on  his  farming  opera- 
tions upon  Manhattan  Island ;  he  seems,  besides,  to  have  been 
something  of  a  speculator,  and  several  large  farms  passed 
through  his  hands  and  were  sold  or  exchanged  by  him.  He 
appears  to  have  been  familiar  with  the  language  and  customs 
of  his  Dutch  neighbors,  was  generally  respected  and  trusted 
by  them,  and  was  often  associated  with  them  in  business  or 
speculation.  In  1651  he  was  appointed  one  of  the  curators 
of  the  estate  of  Jan  Jansen  Damen,  and  seems  to  have  suc- 
ceeded in  reconciling  the  conflicting  interests  of  Damen's 
heirs  in  the  Netherlands  with  those  of  his  stepchildren  in 
New  Amsterdam.  In  1650  he  was  one  of  the  delegates  on 
behalf  of  the  people  in  their  application  for  a  city  government 
for  New  Amsterdam;  and  in  1668  he  was  one  of  the  commis- 
sioners appointed  to  lay  out  and  determine  the  most  con- 
venient wagon-road  to  Harlem. 

After  the  death  of  Thomas  Hall,  in  1669,  his  widow  sold 
in  the  following  year  the  property  on  which  she  and  her 
husband  had  long  resided  to  Willem  Beeckman,  reserving  a 
right  during  her  life  to  one-half  of  its  orchard.  With  the 
Beeckman  family  the  place  soon  came  to  be  popularly  iden- 
tified, the  land  being  known  as  "  Beekman's  orchard  "  long 
after  the  last  apple  or  pear  tree  had  vanished ;  the  modern 
Beekman  Street,  which  traverses  it,  still  aids  in  preserving 
the  associations.  As  for  Mrs.  Anna  Hall,  after  the  sale  of 
the  property,  she  took  up  her  residence  in  a  house  upon  the 
south  side  of  Wall  Street,  near  Broad  Street,  where  she  is 
found  residing  in  1674,  but  the  time  of  her  death  is  not 
ascertained. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 


THE  TOWN'S  END  AND  BESTEVAERS  KREUPELBOSCH.  — 
ISAAC  ALLERTON  AND  HIS  WAREHOUSE. — LOO CKERMANS' 
E ARM.  —  THE  EERRY.  —  HARRY  BRAZIER'S  HOUSE.— 
DIRCK,  THE  POTTER 

There  were  also  pastures  covered  with  gray  rocks,  looking  like  sheep;  the 
green  woods  in  some  places  were  intersected  by  fields  of  brown  rye,  or  soft  clover. 
On  the  whole  it  was  a  verdant  scene,  —  greenness,  like  a  hollow  ocean,  spread  itself 
out  before  her ;  the  hills  were  green,  the  depths  were  green,  the  trees,  grass,  and 
weeds  were  green ;  and  in  the  forest,  on  the  south  margin  of  the  pond,  the  dark- 
ness as  the  sun  went  down  seemed  to  form  itself  into  caverns  and  grottoes,  and 
strange  fantastic  shapes  in  the  solid  greenness.  Deep  in  those  woods  the  blackcap 
and  thrush  still  hooted  and  clang  unweariedly ;  she  heard  also  the  cawing  of 
crows  and  the  scream  of  the  loon  ;  the  tinkle  of  bells,  the  lowing  of  cows,  and 
the  bleating  of  sheep  were  distinctly  audible.  Her  own  robin,  on  the  butternut 
below,  began  his  long,  sweet,  many  toned  carol ;  the  tree-toad  chimed  in  with  its 
loud,  trilling  chirrup;  and  frogs,  from  the  pond  and  mill  brook,  crooled, 
chubbed,  and  croaked. — Jidd's  "Margaret." 

UPON  some  such  summer  evening  as  the  author  of 
"  Margaret "  has  so  graphically  depicted,  and  amid 
very  similar  surroundings,  it  is  not  unlikely  that  there  may 
have  come  to  Thomas  Hall  —  as  he  strolled,  at  about  the 
period  of  our  survey,  in  an  unoccupied  hour,  through  his 
young  orchard  on  the  hill  back  of  his  newly-acquired  home  on 
the  East  River  shore,  and  as  he  looked  over  the  quiet  rural 
landscape  spread  out  before  him  at  the  upper  end  of  the  village 
of  New  Amsterdam  —  memories  of  his  old  home  in  far  away 
Gloucestershire. 

It  was  a  distinctly  English  landscape  :  beyond  the  rear  fence 
of  his  orchard,  about  at  the  present  Gold  Street,  he  saw  as 
he  looked  northwards  —  toward  where  the  tall  newspaper  build- 
ings of  Printing  House  Square  and  the  hurrying  crowds  at  the 
entrance  of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge  now  present  themselves  — 


330     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


the  fields  of  rye  or  of  peas,  of  maize  or  of  tobacco,  of  Govert 
Loockermans'  farm,  long  hired  of  him  and  cultivated  by  a 
sturdy  Dutch  farmer,  Hendrick  Pietersen  van  Hasselt.  Beyond 
the  fence  upon  the  farther  side  of  these  fields,  which  ran  along 
the  line  of  the  present  Chatham  and  Nassau  streets,  lay  the 
broad  stretch  of  the  Common  Pasture,  where  the  cows  from  the 
town  grazed  among  the  scattered  rocks  and  bushes,  or  from 
which,  at  the  close  of  the  day,  they  wended  their  way,  under 
the  guidance  of  their  herdsman,  in  a  leisurely  procession  down 
the  Heerewegh  and  Maagtle  Paetje,  toward  the  houses  of  their 
owners  in  the  town.  Beyond  the  commons  again  were  the 
gently  sloping  fields  of  the  Company's  bouwery,  west  of  the 
present  Broadway :  and  the  wooded  hills  of  Hoboken,  across 
the  North  River,  closed  the  view  in  this  direction. 

As  the  gazer  at  the  above  station  turned  farther  to  his 
right,  he  saw  before  him,  beyond  the  same  fields  of  Loocker- 
mans, —  which  curved,  in  a  semicircular  form,  from  the 
hedges  of  Van  Tienhoven's  lane  down  to  the  East  River,  — 
two  rough,  forest-covered  elevations:  one  of  these,  at  the 
distance  of  about  half  a  mile  from  him,  was  the  hill  known  as 
the  Kalck  (or  Kolck)  Hoek ;  the  other,  somewhat  nearer,  was 
called  (perhaps  from  a  corruption  by  the  Dutch  of  the  English 
word  "  Catamount " )  Catiemuts  Hoek,  or  hill.1  Between 
these  two  hills,  and  shaded  by  their  trees,  which  dropped  their 
butternuts,  acorns,  and  hickory  nuts  into  its  waters,  lay  the 
beautiful  little  lakelet  long  known  as  the  Kolck,2  and  occa- 
sionally spoken  of  merely  as  the  "  Versche  Water,"  or  fresh 
water ;  and  around  the  base  of  the  last-mentioned  hill  wound 
the  narrow  road  or  track  leading  to  the  bouwerys,  situated 
farther  up  the  island.  Still  farther  to  the  right,  the  high 
grounds  and  Loockermans'  fields  fell  away  into  a  tract  of  a 
few  acres  of  wet  meadow-land,  through  which  a  small  brook, 
forming  an  outlet  in  wet  seasons  to  the  Kolck,  flowed  sluggishly 
into  the  East  River  ;  near  the  head  of  this  meadow,  and  where 

1  The  former  of  these  hills  was  long  afterwards  cut  down  in  the  grading  of 
Broadway  through  it ;  the  latter  in  the  grading  of  Chatham  Street. 

2  Corrupted  by  the  English  into  "  Collect/* 


THE  "SWAMP" 


331 


the  road  crossed  its  stream  and  ascended  the  hill  beyond,  two 
or  three  small  thatched  cottages  marked  the  site  of  the  present 
Chatham  Square ;  and  on  the  farther  side  of  the  meadow  the 
ground  rose  again  into  the  broad  fields  and  orchards  of  the 
larger  bouwerys,  laid  out  a  score  of  years  before  by  the  West 
India  Company,  beyond  which  a  curving  line  of  wood-crested 
hills  closed  in  the  horizon. 

In  this  latter  direction,  however,  the  view  of  the  observer 
from  Thomas  Hall's  orchard  was  somewhat  interfered  with  by 
the  trees  of  a  swampy  hollow,  or  basin,  which  lay  below  him. 
This  covered  some  four  or  five  acres  of  ground,  and  was 
known  as  Bestevaers  Kreupelbosch,  or  "  the  Old  Man's 
Swamp."  For  some  reason,  possibly  because  it  was  considered 
worthless,  it  had  never  been  granted  to  any  person  by  the 
officers  of  the  West  India  Company,  although  the  land  sur- 
rounding it  had  all  been  appropriated  by  various  individuals ; 
and  the  Swamp  lay,  cut  off  from  general  access,  a  sort  of 
41  no  man's  land,"  of  not  much  use  except  to  the  adjoining 
owners  for  the  purpose  of  watering  their  cattle  at  its  pools, 
or  to  shoot  woodcock,  —  or  those  birds'  poor  relations,  the 
"high  holders," — in  its  muddy  thickets. 

Whether  because  of  copious  springs  which  existed  in  the 
wet  hollow  of  the  Kreupelbosch,  or  which  had  formerly  existed 
there  before  the  clearing  of  the  surrounding  land,  or  whether 
because  of  the  action  of  the  ancient  glaciers  which  had  moulded 
this  basin,  a  considerable  depression,  as  of  the  bed  of  a  stream 
of  some  size,  led  from  the  Swamp  into  the  East  River ;  its 
traces  may  yet  be  seen  in  the  grade  of  the  modern  Pearl  Street 
at  Peck  Slip.  This  depression,  extending  out  into  the  East 
River,  formed  a  small  cove  or  haven,  upon  one  side  of  which, 
by  a  little  docking  and  filling  out,  Isaac  Allerton,  the  New 
England  trader,  obtained  a  site  for  his  warehouse  with  sufficient 
depth  of  water  to  enable  the  coasting  craft  to  come  up  to  it; 
while  upon  the  other  side  of  the  little  cove  lay  the  boats  and 
scows  of  the  ferry  to  Breucktyn. 

At  the  mention  of  the  name  of  Isaac  Allerton,  every  New 
Yorker  of  aristocratic  proclivities  feels,  or  at  any  rate  might 


332     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


be  expected  to  feel,  a  thrill  of  pride.  Isaac  Allerton  was  not, 
it  is  true,  a  permanent  resident  of  New  Amsterdam,  but  he 
spent  much  of  his  time  at  his  establishment  there  ;  and  when 
the  Dutch  authorities  wished  to  raise  money  from  him  by 
imposts  or  contributions,  they  invariably  spoke  of  him  as  an 
old  and  highly  respected  citizen.  New  York  is  relieved  from 
the  painful  necessity  of  having  to  contemplate  from  a  position 
of  hopeless  inferiority  the  exaltation  of  New  England.  In 
Isaac  Allerton  is  the  one  small  trickling  stream  of  blue  blood 
which  flows  to  New  York  from  the  Pilgrims  of  the  "  May- 
flower," "  that  blessed  band  of  the  First  Ship,"  as  one  of  their 
numerous  historians  handsomely  calls  them.  Isaac  Allerton 
is,  as  it  were,  the  little  leaven  which  leavens  the  whole  New 
York  lump;  and  all  New  Yorkers  have  part  and  parcel  in 
him :  — 

"  Auch  ich  war  in  Arcadien  geboren.  " 

In  considering  the  life  of  Isaac  Allerton,  or  Alderton,  —  as 
he  is  occasionally  called,  —  we  go,  as  we  are  accustomed  to 
regard  it,  very  far  back  into  the  past.  Born  in  1585,  in 
the  county  of  Suffolk  in  England,  perhaps,  —  who  knows  ?  — 
where  the  little  village  of  Alderton,  from  its  low  rise  of 
ground  between  the  marshes  of  the  Aide  and  the  Deben, 
looks  out  to  the  southeastward  upon  the  German  Ocean,  he 
was  old  enough  to  have  remembered  seeing  the  ceaseless 
march  of  the  squads  of  volunteers,  as  they  streamed  through 
Ipswich  on  their  way  to  the  muster  at  Tilbury,  to  fight  for 
England  against  the  Spanish  host  on  the  great  Armada,  and 
in  the  Duke  of  Parma's  transports.  Perhaps,  too,  he  had  rec- 
ollections of  that  summer  day  when  every  hill-top  along  the 
shore  of  Suffolk  was  thronged  with  people  watching  the  far- 
off  cloud  of  Spanish  galleons  as  they  hurried  northwards  to 
escape  the  ships  of  Howard  and  Drake,  while  the  alarm  bells 
from  the  village  churches  were  answering  each  other  in  all 
directions,  and  beacon-fires  were  blazing  all  along  the  coast. 

His  associations  may  well,  indeed,  have  gone  still  farther 
back.    People  of  the  second  preceding  generation  could  have 


ISAAC  ALLERTON 


333 


told  him  —  and  doubtless  often  did  tell  him  —  of  the  dark 
days  in  Suffolk  under  Bishop  Bonner's  persecutions,  in  the 
time  of  Queen  Mary,  for  the  Allertons  were  of  good  Protes- 
tant stock,  and  interested  in  these  things ;  Ralph  Allerton 
and  three  companions  were  burned  together  at  the  stake, 
at  Islington,  in  1557,  for  shocking  Bishop  Bonner's  religious 
sense  by  reading  the  proscribed  "  Communion  Book." 

All  Suffolk  in  Allerton's  younger  days  was  full  of  stories 
and  reminiscences  of  the  persecutions.  Historic  Hadleigh 
was  not  very  far  away,  whose  good  vicar,  Doctor  Rowland 
Taylor,  having  been  tried  for  heresy  in  London,  was  sent 
down  into  Suffolk  to  be  burned  at  the  stake  in  his  own 
parish,  as  a  wholesome  example  to  his  parishioners ;  and  the 
Suffolk  people  still  told  with  reverence  that  pathetic  story 
which  through  three  centuries  and  more  has  never  yet  lost  its 
pathos  : 

"  Coming  within  two  miles  of  Hadleigh,  he  desired  to 
light  off  his  horse,  which  done  he  leaped  and  set  a  frisk 
or  twain  as  men  commonly  do  for  dancing.  '  Why,  master 
doctor,'  quoth  the  sheriff,  'how  do  you  now?'  He  an- 
swered, 1  Well,  God  be  praised,  Master  Sheriff,  never  better ; 
for  now  I  know  I  am  almost  at  home.  I  lack  not  past  two 
stiles  to  go  over,  and  I  am  even  at  my  Father's  house  ! ' "  .  .  . 

At  last,  " '  What  place  is  this,'  he  asked,  4  and  what 
meaneth  it  that  so  much  people  are  gathered  together  ?  '  It 
was  answered,  4  It  is  Oldham  Common,  the  place  where  you 
must  suffer,  and  the  people  are  come  to  look  upon  you.' 
Then  said  he,  4  Thanked  be  God,  I  am  even  at  home  ! '  " 

It  was  with  early  associations  such  as  these  that  Isaac 
Allerton  came,  together  with  his  wife  Mary,  and  his  three 
children,  Bartholomew,  Remember,  and  Mary,  to  Plymouth 
with  the  first  colonists,  in  1620.  Of  his  history  prior  to 
that  time  but  little  is  known.  He  was  evidently  a  man  of 
business  experience,  for  soon  after  the  landing  he  was  chosen 
"  assistant,"  or  what  might  be  called  lieutenant-governor 
under  Governor  Bradford;  he  was,  moreover,  a  man  of  some 
means,  for  he  is  mentioned  as  one  of  the  wealthiest  of  the 


334     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


colonists.  His  thatched  dwelling-house  on  the  south  side  of 
Leyden  Street  in  Plymouth,  opposite  that  of  Governor  Brad- 
ford, is  shown  with  what  is  probably  a  substantial  degree  of 
accuracy  in  the  imaginary  view  of  old  Plymouth  painted  by 
Mr.  W.  L.  Williams.  Its  site  is  now  apparently  occupied  by 
the  later  Market  Street,  but  the  "  delicate  spring  "  at  the 
rear  of  his  house  lot  still  flows  into  the  old  Town  Brook  as 
it  did  when  he  first  drank  of  its  waters.  His  name  is  com- 
memorated in  one  of  the  principal  streets  of  Plymouth,  and 
it  is  upon  Allerton  Street  that  the  noble  monument  to  the 
Pilgrims  stands. 

Isaac  Allerton  was  not  exempted  from  the  early  trials  of 
the  Plymouth  Colonists ;  scarcely  more  than  two  months  had 
elapsed  from  the  landing,  when  his  wife  succumbed  to  the 
hardships  of  her  life  in  the  colony.  Five  years  afterwards, 
in  1626,  he  married  for  his  second  wife  the  daughter  of  Elder 
William  Brewster,1  by  whom  he  had  a  son,  Isaac,  who,  as 
well  as  his  father,  figures  in  the  history  of  New  Amsterdam. 
Allerton  soon  became  engaged  in  trading  ventures,  —  at  first 
along  the  northeastern  coast,  as  it  would  seem,  —  but  these 
were  not  always  successful;  and  in  1633  a  trading  house 
which  he  had  at  Machias,  on  the  Maine  coast,  was  destroyed 
by  the  French.  Soon  after  this  period  he  seems  to  have 
turned  his  attention  to  the  southwestern  coast  and  to  the  in- 
creasing importance  of  the  Dutch  trade  at  New  Amsterdam. 
His  ties  at  Plymouth  had  become  loosened  by  the  death  of 
his  second  wife  in  1633,  and  soon  after  the  establishment  of 
the  New  Haven  colony,  in  1638,  we  find  him  a  resident  of  that 
place,  where  in  1646  he  married  his  third  wife,  Joanna.2 

In  the  mean  time  Isaac  Allerton's  trading  operations  had 
led  him  at  an  early  date  to  New  Amsterdam,  where  he  was 

1  Fear  Brewster,  according  to  some  of  the  biographers,  but  in  the  Plymouth 
list  the  same  person  seems  to  be  designated  by  the  name  of  "  Love."  Besides  this 
lady  and  Remember  Allerton,  that  list  contains  the  curious  names  of  Desire 
Winter,  Wrestling  Brewster,  Humility  Cooper,  Resolved  White,  and  Oceanus 
Hopkins. 

2  It  was  this  lady  who,  some  time  after  the  death  of  her  husband,  is  said  to 
have  given  shelter  to  the  fugitive  regicides,  Goffe  and  Whnlley. 


ALLERTON'S  WAREHOUSE 


335 


soon  brought  into  intimate  business  relations  with  the  Dutch 
trader,  Govert  Loockermans.  As  early  as  1642  we  find  him 
negotiating  a  sale  to  Loockermans  and  to  one  Cornells  Leen- 
dertsen,  for  the  sum  of  1100  carolus  guilders  (equivalent  to 
about  $450)  of  his  bark  "  The  Hope,"  reserving  the  right  of 
a  return  voyage  in  her  to  the  Rodeberch,  or  Red  Hill,  as  the 
Dutch  called  New  Haven.  In  the  next  year,  he  and  Loock- 
ermans jointly  took  a  grant  from  the  Director  and  Council  of 
a  parcel  of  ground  on  the  east  side  of  the  present  Broadway, 
a  short  distance  north  of  Beaver  Street,  which  ground,  as  has 
already  been  observed,1  may  have  been  intended  as  a  site  for  a 
warehouse,  but  which  was  never  used  for  such  a  purpose, 
having  been  sold  by  the  grantees  within  a  few  years  after  its 
acquisition. 

As  early  as  164G  or  1647,  however,  Allerton  had  made 
arrangements  to  establish  a  permanent  trading  house  in  New 
Amsterdam,  which  was  under  the  immediate  supervision  of  a 
clerk  or  agent,  George  Woolsey,  from  Yarmouth  in  England. 
He  had  purchased,  for  this  purpose,  from  Philip  de  Truy,  the 
owner,2  a  parcel  of  land,  being  a  narrow  strip  lying  between 
the  road  and  the  East  River  shore  and  containing  more  than 
five  hundred  feet  of  water  frontage.  At  the  southern  end  this 
parcel  of  ground  contained  but  a  few  feet  in  width ;  at  its  north- 
ern end,  however,  where  it  abutted  upon  the  little  haven  al- 
ready spoken  of,  which,  long  ago  filled  up,  forms  the  modern 
Peck  Slip,  it  was  of  much  greater  width  ;  and  here,  after  a  little 
docking  out  and  filling,  Isaac  Allerton  built  his  warehouse,  a 
capacious  two-story  building,  the  appearance  of  which  has, 
without  doubt,  been  preserved  to  us  by  the  Labadist  mis- 
sionaries, Danker  and  Sluyter,  in  their  view  of  New 
York  in  1679.  The  warehouse  would  appear  to  have  very 
nearly  occupied  the  sites  of  the  present  buildings,  Nos.  8 
and  10  Peck  Slip. 

Here,  then,  for  a  number  of  years  the  old  Puritan  mer- 
chant carried  on  his  commercial  transactions,  making  fre- 

1  See  ante,  page  237. 

2  The  deed  bears  date,  April  10,  1647. 


336     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


quent  journeys  backwards  and  forwards  from  his  house  at 
New  Haven.  Besides  being  at  times  quite  largely  interested 
in  trade  with  the  Netherlands  and  in  dealings  directly  with 
the  West  India  Company,  a  great  part  of  the  commerce  be- 
tween New  Netherland  and  the  New  England  colonies  passed 
through  his  hands.  His  warehouse  here  upon  the  East  River 
became  the  resort  of  most  of  the  English  doing  business  in 
New  Amsterdam  ;  and  here,  doubtless,  many  profound  dis- 
cussions took  place  respecting  the  powers  of  the  monarch  and 
of  the  parliament ;  of  "  Divine  Right,"  and  of  "The  Good  Old 
Cause ; "  of  the  trial  of  King  Charles  and  of  the  doings  of 
Oliver  Cromwell.  "  Allerton's  Building  "  in  fact  was  a  prom- 
inent feature  of  the  town  ;  and  in  the  autumn  of  1656,  we  find 
George  Woolsey,  who  was  still  residing  at  the  house,  making 
a  petition  to  the  burgomasters  for  permission  to  retail  wine 
and  beer  there,  "  as  many  strangers  apply  to  him  for  lodgings." 
A  license  was  refused  at  first,  but  was  finally  granted  "  for 
one  year,  as  he  has  been  at  trouble,  but  not  permanently,  as 
being  at  too  great  a  distance,  and  therefore  suspect." 

The  warehouse,  too,  was  occasionally  used  in  part  at  least 
for  other  purposes  than  those  of  commerce.    In  November, 

1654,  it  was  hired  by  the  burgomasters  for  the  temporary  re- 
ception of  fifty  boys  and  girls  sent  over  from  the  almshouse 
at  Amsterdam,  —  an  experiment  by  the  magistrates  of  that 
city.  These  children  were  to  be  bound  out  for  the  term  of 
five  years,  after  which  period  each  was  to  receive  fifty -three 
acres  of  land.  Nor  was  Allerton's  warehouse  devoid  of  his- 
torical associations.  When  the  Indians  landed,  in  large 
numbers,  upon  Manhattan  Island,  on  the  15th  of  September, 

1655,  in  the  absence  of  Director-General  Stuyvesant  and  of 
his  soldiers,  who  had  started  a  few  days  before  upon  their  ex- 
pedition against  the  Swedes  on  the  Delaware  River,  one  of  the 
first  points  at  which  they  commenced  their  work  of  violence  was 
at  this  warehouse.  "  They  ran  in  large  armed  parties  through 
the  streets,"  says  Van  Tienhoven,  in  his  report  to  the  Coun- 
cil, "  violently  attacked  the  house  of  Mr.  Allerton,  knocking 
the  lock  from  his  door,  beating  his  servants,  and  ransacking 


ATTACK  ON  THE  WAREHOUSE 


337 


his  premises,  on  pretence  of  searching  for  two  Indians." 
There  is  indeed  no  telling  to  what  lengths  the  Indians  might 
have  proceeded  upon  this  occasion,  for  they  were  in  number 
five  or  six  hundred,  and  all  of  this  portion  of  the  town  was  in 
their  power.  They  observed,  however,  that  the  guns  of  a 
Dutch  ship  commanded  by  Captain  Scharborgh,  which  lay  in 
the  East  River  opposite  Allerton's  Warehouse,  were  being 
brought  to  bear  upon  the  spot.  A  panic  seized  them,  and 
they  scurried  away  into  the  "  Kreupelbosch  "  and  behind  the 
hill  back  of  Thomas  Hall's  house,  to  get  out  of  range  of  the 
guns  in  the  vessel.  It  is  quite  probable  that  these  depreda- 
tions by  the  natives  led  to  the  subsequent  construction  of 
palisades  around  Allerton's  place,  for  in  the  "  Duke's  Plan  " 
of  1661,  the  building  appears  to  stand  in  an  enclosure. 

As  Isaac  Allerton  advanced  in  years,  he  seems  to  have 
withdrawn  more  and  more  from  active  business  at  New  Am- 
sterdam, his  son  Isaac  Allerton,  Junior,  taking  his  place. 
This  young  man,  who  at  the  time  of  the  building  of  his 
father's  warehouse  at  New  Amsterdam  must  have  been  a 
student  at  the  then  newly  established  Harvard  College,  where 
he  graduated  in  or  about  the  year  1650,  we  find  in  occasional 
charge  of  his  father's  commercial  interests  as  early  as  1653. 
The  elder  Allerton,  however,  never  lost  interest  in  the  foster- 
ing of  trade  and  intercourse  between  New  England  and  New 
Netherland,  and  upon  more  than  one  occasion  he  is  found 
mediating,  or  even  giving  his  own  personal  guarantee,  for 
the  sake  of  avoiding  quarrels  between  his  countrymen  and  the 
Dutch  of  New  Amsterdam.  He  died  at  New  Haven  in  the 
early  part  of  the  year  1659,  and  on  the  16th  of  December  of 
that  year  on  the  application  of  his  son  Isaac,  we  find  the 
burgomasters  of  New  Amsterdam  appointing  his  old  business 
associate  Govert  Loockermans,  together  with  Captain  Paulus 
Leendertsen  van  der  Grift,  George  Woolsey,  and  John  Law- 
rence, curators  of  his  estate  in  New  Amsterdam.1  Whether 

1  Isaac  Allerton's  youngest  daughter,  Mary,  who  married  Elder  Cushman, 
died  at  a  great  age,  in  1G99,  and  is  believed  by  some  of  the  historians  of  Ply- 
mouth to  have  been  tbe  last  survivor  of  the  "  Mayflower  "  colonists. 

22 


338     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


the  New  England  trade  was  still  carried  on  at  the  warehouse 
after  Isaac  Allerton's  decease,  and  if  so,  in  whose  hands  it 
remained,  are  matters  about  which  there  is  much  obscurity. 
The  building  itself  was  standing  many  years  after  the  death 
of  its  original  owner,  and  towards  the  close  of  the  seventeenth 
century  it  had  come  into  the  possession  of  the  Beeckmans, 
who  owned  the  property  upon  the  opposite  side  of  the  road, 
or  the  modern  Pearl  Street. 

With  the  exception  of  the  wooded  swamp,  of  four  or  five 
acres  in  area,  known  as  Bestevaers  Kreupelbosch,  which,  as 
has  been  previously  stated,  was  never  made  the  subject  of  a 
grant  by  the  Dutch  government,  all  the  land  lying  between 
Isaac  Allerton's  warehouse  and  the  meadow  called  Wolphert 
Gerritsen's  Vly  (which  with  the  small  stream  flowing  through 
it  known  as  the  Versche  Water,  or  sometimes  as  the  Old  Kill, 
formed  the  northern  boundary  of  that  portion  of  Manhattan 
Island  pertaining  more  especially  to  the  town  of  New  Am- 
sterdam) composed  originally  a  farm  of  about  thirty-five  acres, 
which,  when  it  is  first  brought  to  our  notice,  about  the  year 
1640,  had  been  partly  cleared  and  cultivated  by  David  Pro- 
voost.  This  tract  extended  back  from  the  river  to  the  Com- 
mon Pasture,  now  the  City  Hall  Park,  and  its  area,  now  densely- 
crowded,  in  part  with  great  office,  factory,  and  newspaper 
buildings,  in  part  with  squalid  tenements  of  a  river-side  pop- 
ulation, may  be  said  roughly  to  extend  from  the  modern 
Ferry  and  Ann  streets  about  to  the  present  James  Street. 
Near  the  river  shore  stood  Provoost's  humble  farmhouse,  at 
a  point  which  is  believed  to  be  in  the  interior  of  the  block 
between  the  modern  Pearl  and  Water  streets,  Dover  Street,  and 
Peck  Slip.  East  of  the  house  and  extending  from  the  river 
shore  up  to  the  present  Franklin  Square,  of  which  it  covered 
the  site  as  well  as  that  of  the  modern  Dover  Street,  was  a 
small  cherry  and  apple  orchard,  long  afterwards  famous  as 
"  the  Cherry  Garden,"  the  trees  of  which  may  very  likely  have 
been  set  out  by  Provoost  himself.  Two  centuries  and  a  half 
after  their  planting  they  are  still  commemorated  by  the 


THE  LOOCKERMANS  FARM 


339 


Cherry  Street  of  the  present  day,  —  little  suggestive  of  the 
fragrant  white  blossoms  of  the  old  seventeenth-century 
orchard.  At  David  Provoost's  farmhouse  the  road  or  track 
along  the  East  River  terminated,  in  his  day ;  whether  the 
ferry  to  Long  Island  was  established  here  during  his  occu- 
pancy we  cannot  tell,  but  after  he  had  left  the  farm  (which 
he  had  probably  held  as  a  tenant  of  the  West  India  Com- 
pany), it  was  granted  on  the  26th  of  March,  1642,  to  two 
men,  —  to  Govert  Loockerrnans,  the  merchant,  and  to  one 
Cornelis  Leendertsen,  —  who  undoubtedly  purchased  the 
property  with  the  direct  intention  of  maintaining  the  ferry 
here.  The  description  of  the  farm  as  given  in  the  deed  to 
these  two  purchasers  presents  such  a  curious  picture  of  the 
condition  at  that  early  day  of  that  portion  of  the  modern  city 
which  has  been  designated  above;  that  a  translation  of  it, 
with  some  parenthetical  explanations,  may  be  not  uninter- 
esting :  it  is  described  as  "  a  dwelling  house  on  the  East 
River,  together  with  the  land  thereto  belonging,  as  the 
same  is  fenced  in  by  David  Provoost,  which  fencing 
begins  at  a  brook  of  fresh  water  emptying  itself  into  the 
East  River "  (the  outlet  of  the  Kolck  Pond,  the  course  of 
which  ran  irregularly  along  the  present  Roosevelt  and  James 
streets),  "  till  to  the  land  of  Cornelis  van  Tienhoven" 
(which  lay  south  of  the  present  Ann  Street ;  and  Provoost's 
fence  towards  it  skirted  generally  the  modern  Chatham  and 
Nassau  streets),  "  whose  palisades,  extending  from  the  long 
highway  "  (present  Broadway)  "  towards  the  East  River " 
(along  present  Ann  Street),  "  as  may  be  seen  by  the  marks  by 
him  made  "  (the  fence  of  Van  Tienhoven  being  evidently  not 
as  yet  completed),  "  bordering  on  the  aforesaid  lands  from  the 
fence  till  to  the  great  tree"  (at  the  intersection  of  Ann  and 
Gold  streets),  "  which  is  the  right  division  line  between  the 
land  of  Philip  de  Truy  and  Tienhoven ;  the  said  Philip  ex- 
tending his  palisades  from  the  said  tree  northeast  by  east  and 
east  northeast  between  both  "  (that  is,  midway  between  these 
two  courses  and  along  the  present  Gold  Street),  "  till  to  Bes- 
tevaers  Kreupelbosch"  (the  well-known  modern  "Swamp" 


340     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


of  Jacob  Street  and  of  the  leather  trade),  "  and  from  the 
East  River  northwest  and  north  northwest"  (along  Ferry 
Street),  "  till  to  the  same  swamp."  The  fact  that  "  the 
Swamp  "  itself  did  not  pass  under  this  description  evidently 
shows  that  at  this  time  Provoost  had  fenced  around  it,  prob- 
ably for  the  purpose  of  keeping  his  cattle  out  of  its  muddy 
depths.  The  rear  portions  of  this  farm,  towards  the  present 
Chatham  Street,  were,  it  is  also  evident,  only  partly  cleared  of 
timber  at  the  time  of  this  grant. 

Of  the  actual  establishment  of  the  Long  Island  Ferry  on 
Loockermans'  and  Leendertsen's  farm  but  little  is  known, 
except  that  it  was  under  the  control  of  Cornells  Dircksen 
(usually  spoken  of  as  the  first  ferryman),  as  early  as  the  fall 
of  1642.  That  there  should  have  been  some  earlier  regular 
means  of  communication  with  the  Long  Island  plantations, 
which  were  established  several  years  prior  to  the  last-men- 
tioned date,  would  seem  altogether  probable,  but  nothing  in 
relation  to  the  matter  has  come  to  us.  The  location  of  the 
ferry  was  the  outcome  of  natural  conditions  which  prevailed ; 
the  most  feasible  road  to  the  river,  upon  the  Long  Island  side, 
being  down  the  ravine  or  depression  which  marked  the  course 
of  the  modern  Fulton  Street,  and  the  landing-place  upon 
Manhattan  Island  being  directly  opposite  the  termination  of 
the  Breucklyn  road,  and  at  nearly  the  narrowest  part  of  the 
East  River.  As  for  Cornelis  Dircksen,  the  ferryman,  he 
possessed  a  farm  upon  the  north  side  of  the  present  Fulton 
Street,  near  the  ferry,  upon  the  Long  Island  side  of  the 
river,  and  this  he  was,  doubtless,  actively  engaged  in  clearing 
and  cultivating  at  this  time,  for  although  the  ferry  and  its 
appurtenances  were  under  his  control,  as  already  stated,  he 
does  not  appear  to  have  been  occupied,  during  much  of  the 
time,  in  its  actual  management,  for  as  early  as  1643  he  had 
leased  it  to  Captain  Willem  Tomassen.  A  house  and  landing- 
place  being  also  required  for  ferry  purposes  on  the  New 
Amsterdam  side  of  the  river,  it  is  quite  evident  that  Loocker- 
mans' house  and  the  land  in  its  vicinity  was  hired  for  those 
purposes,  but  whether  the  building  was  used  exclusively  by 


THE  LONG  ISLAND  FERRY 


341 


the  ferryman  and  his  employees,  or  whether  it  was  partly 
used  for  purposes  of  the  farm,  is  not  ascertained.  At  some 
time  prior  to  the  year  1646,  Loockermans'  associate, 
Cornells  Leendertsen,  died,  and  Dirck  Cornelissen,  who  seems 
to  have  been  his  son,  had  taken  his  place  ;  other  "  partners  " 
in  the  Netherlands  are  spoken  of  in  some  papers  executed  by 
Loockermans  and  Dirck  Cornelissen  about  this  time,  but  this 
may  refer  merely  to  others  of  Cornells  Leendertsen's  heirs. 
It  was  at  this  period  that  Govert  Loockermans  and  Dirck 
Cornelissen,  after  reserving  the  farmhouse  and  a  parcel  of 
ground  of  irregular  shape,  lying  to  the  east  of  it  and  embrac- 
ing three  acres  or  more  of  land,  disposed  of  the  rest  of  the 
farm  in  the  following  manner :  The  land  lying  between  the 
farmhouse  and  Allerton's  warehouse  (then  probably  just  in 
course  of  erection),  was  sold  to  one  William  Goulder.  This 
parcel,  which  covered  nearly  two  acres  of  ground,  ran  "  from 
the  height  next  the  Strand  "  back  to  Bestevaers  Kreupelbosch ; 
and  its  easterly  line  seems  to  have  about  crossed  the  site  of 
the  present  Harper  building,  near  Franklin  Square  ;  along  its 
foot  on  the  "  Strand  "  (no  longer  following  the  present  Pearl 
Street),  ran  the  road  to  Loockermans'  farmhouse,  and  to  the 
ferry. 

Another  parcel  of  ground  sold  by  Loockermans  and 
Cornelissen  at  this  time  was  at  the  farthest  extremity  of 
their  land  along  the  East  River,  where  there  was  a  long,  nar- 
row strip  of  upland  lying  between  the  river  shore  and  the 
meadow,  called  Wolpherts  Vly ;  around  its  terminal  point,  the 
brook  known  as  the  "  Old  Kill "  emptied  into  the  East  River, 
not  far  from  the  line  of  the  modern  James  Street.  This  point 
of  land,  not  more  than  one  hundred  and  seventy  feet  in  width 
at  its  widest  part,  and  gradually  diminishing  throughout  its 
length  of  about  three  hundred  and  sixty  feet,  ahnost  to  a 
mere  point  at  its  northeasterly  termination,  was  sold  to  an 
Englishman  named  George  Cleer.  At  the  same  time  also, 
the  balance  of  the  Loockermans'  farm  was  leased  for  ten  years 
to  Hendrick  Pietersen  van  Hasselt,  a  farmer  who  had  been 
one  of  the  first  tenants  of  the  West  India  Company's  bouwery 


342     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


lying  west  of  the  common  pasture,  or  modern  City  Hall  Park. 
This  man  occupied  a  small  house  of  his  own  on  the  Heerewegh, 
or  Broadway,  just  outside  of  the  "  Land  Poort,"  or  gate  at 
Wall  Street,  and  was  a  well-known  character  of  the  town, 
who  bore  the  whimsical  appellation  of  Kint  in 't  Water,  or 
"Child-in-the-Water." 

If  Loockermans  and  Cornelissen  had  any  expectations  that 
the  neighborhood  of  their  East  River  farm  was  to  be  improved 
by  the  grants  they  made  to  William  Goulder  and  to  George 
Cleer,  in  1646,  they  were  doomed  to  disappointment.  Neither 
of  these  men  seems  to  have  made  any  attempt  to  build  upon 
the  lands  purchased  by  them.  There  are  traces  of  Goulder's 
occupation  of  his  parcel  as  late  as  1649,  after  Avhich  no 
further  reference  to  him  is  met  with.1  George  Cleer  was  living 
as  late  as  1660,  when  he  took  part  in  forming  the  first  settle- 
ment of  the  town  of  Rye,  in  Westchester  County ;  whether 
his  design  in  purchasing  this  remote  corner  of  land  on  the 
Loockermans'  farm  was  to  establish  potteries  or  a  mill  there, 
as  was  afterwards  done  by  others,  we  can  only  conjecture. 
At  all  events,  both  his  parcel  of  ground  and  that  of  Goulder 
are  soon  found  to  have  returned  into  Loockermans'  possession, 
very  probably  by  virtue  of  mortgages  which  he  held  upon 
them. 

Through  his  marriage  with  the  widow  of  Dirck  Cornelissen, 
in  1649,  Govert  Loockermans  had  come  into  complete  pos- 
session of  the  East  River  farm.  In  1653  he  sold  the  farm- 
house, with  its  garden,  orchard,  etc.,  to  the  then  newly  appointed 
ferry-master,  Eghbert  van  Borsum,  who  was  the  owner  of  the 
premises  at  the  time  of  our  survey.  This  man,  who  was  the 
son  of  Jan  van  Borsum,  of  Embden,  in  East  Friesland,  an 
ancient  town  under  German  rule  but  with  many  Dutch  char- 
acteristics, had  come  to  New  Netherland  at  a  comparatively 
early  date,  where,  in  1639,  he  married  Annetje  Hendrickse, 
of  Amsterdam.  He  seems  to  have  been  engaged  in  the 
coasting  trade,  and  in  1647  was  master  of  the  "  yacht " 

1  lie  may  have  been  the  person  called  William  Goulding,  whom  we  find  in 
1661  at  Gravesend,  L.  I. 


VAN  BORSUM,  THE  FERRYMAN  343 


Prins  Willem.  He  was,  moreover,  on  good  terms  with  Direc- 
tor-General Stuyvesant,  and  in  1649  reported  to  that  official 
certain  hard  things  which  the  latter' s  enemy,  Cornells  Melyn, 
had  said  ahont  him  at  New  Haven,  with  which  Van  Borsum 
claimed  to  have  been  greatly  shocked.1  Perhaps  it  was  in 
return  for  these  good  offices  that  in  the  fall  of  1652  Eghbert 
received  the  appointment  of  ferry-master  to  Long  Island ;  and 
in  the  old  farmhouse  he  kept  a  tavern,  where  many  a  thirsty 
passenger  has  refreshed  himself  before  or  after  braving  the 
perils  of  a  journey  across  the  East  River  in  one  of  Eghbert' s 
scows.  Although  the  office  of  ferryman  was  no  sinecure,  — 
since  by  the  regulations  of  1654  he  had  to  hold  himself  in 
readiness  to  transport  across  the  river  any  passengers  that 
might  offer  themselves  between  the  hours  of  five  o'clock  in 
the  morning  and  eight  in  the  evening  in  summer,  and  from 
seven  till  five  in  the  winter,2  —  yet  Eghbert  seems  to  have 
found  it  a  lucrative  one,  and  at  about  the  time  of  our  survey, 
or  towards  the  close  of  the  year  1655,  he  was  actively  engaged 
in  building  a  new  house  for  himself  on  the  Breucklyn  side. 
The  old  house  and  the  ferry  seem  to  have  remained  in 
Van  Borsum's  hands  for  several  years  longer,  but  by 
1670  they  had  returned  into  the  possession  of  Govert 
Loockermans. 

At  the  period  of  our  survey,  the  ferry-house  was  no  longer 
the  outpost  in  this  direction,  of  New  Amsterdam.  In  1653,  at 
about  the  time  of  the  sale  to  Eghbert  van  Borsum,  Loocker- 
mans had  sold  another  parcel  of  land,  lying  to  the  eastward  of 
Van  Borsum's  garden  and  orchard,  to  Henry  Brazier,  fre- 
quently spoken  of  by  the  Dutch  as  Herry  Breser.  Brazier 
was  an  Englishman  from  the  shire  of  Essex,  and  is  found  in 
New  Amsterdam  as  early  as  1644,  in  which  year  he  married 
Susanna,  the  widow  of  William  Watkyns.  He  appears  to 
have  been  a  tobacco-planter,  and  had  a  tract  of  about  thirty- 
two  acres  of  land  upon  Long  Island,  somewhat  north  of 

1  See  ante,  pnge  115. 

2  The  curious  reservation  was  made,  "not  during  tempests,  or  when  the  mill 
has  given  way." 


344     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


the  ferry,1  and  nearly  opposite  the  land  which  he  acquired  of 
Loockermans.  This  plot,  purchased  from  Loockermans,  seems 
to  have  extended  along  the  river  from  the  ferryman's  garden 
a  distance  of  about  two  hundred  and  ninety  English  feet,  to  a 
point  about  seventy  or  eighty  feet  west  of  the  present  Roosevelt 
Street.  From  the  shore  it  ran  back  from  two  hundred  to  two 
hundred  and  fifty  feet  to  a  line  a  short  distance  north  of  the 
present  Cherry  Street.  The  continuation  of  the  ferryman's 
road  still  ran  along  the  beach  to  give  access  to  Brazier's  place, 
and  there  is  evidence  that  his  house  stood  close  to  the  shore 
at  a  spot  a  few  feet  east  of  the  present  Dover  Street,  and  south 
of  Cherry  Street.  Brazier  had  hardly  established  himself  at 
this  place  when,  in  the  summer  of  1654,  the  Dutch  in  New 
Amsterdam  were  thrown  into  a  great  state  of  excitement  by 
the  intelligence  that  an  English  fleet  sent  by  Cromwell  had 
arrived  in  New  England  in  the  war  then  being  carried  on 
between  England  and  the  Netherlands,  and  that  preparations 
were  being  made  there  for  an  attack  on  New  Amsterdam. 
Henry  Brazier,  suspected  by  his  Dutch  neighbors,  may  have 
found  his  position  an  irksome  one,  or  he  may  have  considered 
the  Dutch  chances  for  successful  resistance  as  hopeless,  and 
may  therefore  have  started  off  to  acquire  the  merit  of  a  timely 
submission  to  the  anticipated  new  regime.  At  any  rate  he 
quitted  New  Amsterdam,  —  in  all  probability  with  his  f amily, — 
although  in  doing  so  at  such  a  time  he  violated  one  of  Direc- 
tor-General Stuyvesant's  ordinances.  As  peace,  however,  was 
soon  afterwards  declared  between  England  and  the  Nether- 
lands, Brazier  found  himself  somewhat  amiss  in  his  calcula- 
tions. He  returned  to  New  Amsterdam  in  1655,  much  crest- 
fallen, but  Stuyvesant  and  the  Council  received  him  in  high 
dudgeon,  and  made  an  order  on  the  5th  of  May  of  that  year, 
that  "Harry  Bresar,  who  left  in  the  time  of  the  troubles, 
despite  the  notices,  is  to  be  allowed  to  return  to  settle  his 
affairs,  but  not  to  become  domiciliated."    It  took  Brazier  so 

1  Oddly  enough,  Mr.  D.  T.  Valentine,  and  a  host  of  those  who  have  followed 
him,  have  transferred  this  land  to  the  other  side  of  the  river,  "  in  the  vicinity  of 
the  present  Franklin  Square." 


DIRCK  THE  POT-BAKER 


345 


long  to  settle  his  affairs,  however,  that  ten  years  afterwards 
he  is  found  quietly  residing  here  with  his  wife  and  family  of 
four  young  daughters.  The  wrath  of  the  Dutch  was,  as  a 
rule,  not  of  long  duration,  and  Brazier  probably  had  little 
difficulty  in  making  his  peace  with  them. 

In  1653,  Govert  Loockermans  disposed  of  the  remaining 
parcel  of  the  shore  front  of  his  farm  along  the  East  River 
(being  the  same  parcel  which  in  1641  he  had  conveyed  to 
George  Cleer)  to  another  Englishman,  a  Londoner  named 
Thomas  Stevenson.  Stevenson  about  this  time  had  recently 
been  engaged  in  farming  some  land  across  the  East  River, 
and  may  have  desired,  as  did  many  of  the  other  Long  Island 
farmers,  to  acquire  a  place  of  residence  in  New  Amsterdam 
within  the  protection  of  the  fort  and  garrison,  and  yet  as  near 
as  possible  to  their  farming  lands.  He  built  at  once  upon 
this  point  of  land,  but  in  the  next  year  he  left  to  take  part  in 
the  newly  established  settlement  of  Middelburgh,  the  later 
Newtown  on  Long  Island,  selling  his  property  upon  the  point, 
which  then  seems  to  have  contained  two  buildings,  probably 
of  a  rather  humble  description,  to  Willem  Pietersen  de  Groot, 
a  Dutchman  from  Haerlem,  and  to  Jan  Peeck,  the  latter  of 
whom  does  not  appear  further  in  connection  with  the  prop- 
erty. Willem  Pietersen,  however,  soon  leased  the  premises 
to  a  man  who  spent  many  years  of  his  life  there,  and  who 
purchased  the  place  in  1657,  a  short  time  after  the  period  of 
our  survey.  This  was  Dirck  Claessen,  from  Leeuwerden,  the 
capital  city  of  the  province  of  Friesland,  in  the  Netherlands. 
He  was  more  commonly  known  as  Dirck  de  Pottebaker,  or 
"  the  potter,"  and  it  seems  quite  probable  that  he  carried  on 
his  potteries  at  this  place,  his  house  being  near  the  shore,  and 
very  near  the  present  Roosevelt  Street.  Life  was  not  all 
eau-de-cologne  and  rose  leaves  at  that  spot,  any  more  in  the 
seventeenth  century  than  it  is  at  the  present  day.  The  neigh- 
bors were  not  at  all  harmonious.  Mrs.  Brazier's  patience 
was  sorely  tried  by  the  pot-baker's  hogs  which  frequently 
ravaged  her  garden,  insomuch  that  she  represents  to  the 
burgomasters  that  she  "  suffers  great  damage,  and  has  to  have 


346     NEW  AMSTERDAM  AND  ITS  PEOPLE 


one  of  her  children  constantly  in  attendance."  Nevertheless, 
the  Braziers  bore  no  malice,  and  when,  not  long  afterwards,, 
Dirck  had  had  a  serious  falling  out  with  his  wife,  a  widow 
whom  he  had  espoused  a  short  time  before,  we  find  the  deacons 
of  the  Dutch  Church  informing  the  magistrates  that  "  Dirck 
Claessen,  Pottebacker,  has  driven  away  his  wife,  and  that  the 
aforesaid  woman  suffers  great  want,  and  lies  on  straw  without 
bed  or  bedding,  at  Mr.  Herry  Bresar's  house  at  the  ferry, 
by  the  fresh  water,  and  has  the  ague,  and  that  her  husband 
will  not  allow  sufficient  for  her  support." 

The  road  or  track  along  the  East  River  shore,  less  and  less 
travelled  as  it  extended  beyond  the  ferry,  till  finally  trodden 
mainly  by  Dirck  Claessen  and  his  hogs,  terminated  at  that 
worthy's  dwelling.  Two  or  three  years  after  the  time  of  our 
survey,  or  in  1658,  Abraham  Pietersen,  the  miller,  had  thrown 
a  dam  across  the  little  brook  of  the  "  Fresh  Water,"  and  near 
the  present  James  and  Cherry  streets  had  built  a  tide-mill, 
which  he  used  for  a  few  years,  till  the  neighboring  residents 
made  complaint  of  Iris  dam  throwing  back  salt  water  into  the 
Kolck  pond.  In  1655,  however,  Dirck  Claessen's  house  upon 
the  Point  was  the  Ultima  Thule  of  New  Amsterdam.  Behind 
it  lay  the  lonely  salt  meadow  of  Wolfpherts  Vly,  and  before 
it  stretched  the  lonely  expanse  of  the  East  River.  The  wild 
ducks  swam  along  the  shore  without  much  fear  of  molestation ; 
gulls  skimmed  along  the  surface  of  the  water ;  the  fish-hawk 
sailed  in  graceful  circles  high  above  it,  or  shot  down  into  it 
after  his  prey,  like  an  arrow  from  a  bow ;  and  crows  stalked 
along  in  search  of  dainties  over  the  shingly  beach,  which 
stretched  away  towards  the  northeast,  at  the  foot  of  the  low 
bluffs,  till  at  the  distance  of  a  mile  or  more  it  curved  to  the 
left  and  disappeared  around  the  tumbled  boulders  of  Corlaers 
Hoek. 


APPENDIX  I 


THE  JUSTUS  DANCKERS  VIEW  OF  NEW  AMSTERDAM 
1  FTER  the  completion  of  the  text  of  the  present  work,  there 


came  into  the  possession  of  the  author  a  view  of  New  Am- 


sterdam of  more  than  ordinary  interest.  It  is  an  old  litho- 
graph, eight  by  eleven  and  one-half  inches  in  size,  and  purports  to 
be  copied  from  an  ancient  etching  of  the  same  size,  published  by 
Justus  Danckers  at  Amsterdam.  Like  the  "  Hartgers  View," 
alluded  to  in  a  previous  note,  the  authenticity  of  this  view  is 
vouched  for  by  the  fact  that  it  is  a  reverse.  The  date  given  to  the 
print  is  "about  the  year  1640,"  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  repre- 
sents a  period  about  ten  years  later  than  that  date.  It  was  pub- 
lished by  Henry  R.  Robinson  of  New  York,  at  some  date  appar- 
ently between  the  years  1836  and  1842. 

Upon  reversing  this  view,  it  is  found  to  correspond  quite  closely 
in  its  general  appearance  with  the  well-known  "  Vanderdonck 
View,"  but  upon  a  minute  examination,  the  points  of  dissimilarity 
are  found  to  be  numerous.  These  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
view  is  either  the  original  camera  obscura  sketch  (supposed  to  have 
been  taken  by  Augustyn  Heermans)  from  which  the  "  Vander- 
donck View  "  was  prepared,  and  that  the  differences  are  caused  by 
carelessness  in  the  reversing  and  copying  of  that  sketch ;  or  else 
that  the  Danckers  view  is  a  different  and  independent  one  taken 
from  about  the  same  point,  —  upon  the  northwesterly  part  of  Gov- 
ernor's Island,  —  and  at  somewhere  about  the  same  period. 

Several  of  the  topographical  features  of  the  town  are  brought 
out  with  much  greater  distinctness  upon  this  Danckers  view  than 
on  the  "  Vanderdonck  View."    Some  of  these  are  as  follows: 

1.  The  old  storehouse  of  the  West  India  Company,  which  occu- 
pied a  part  of  the  present  Whitehall  Street,  is  shown  with  great 
distinctness,  occupying,  in  fact,  almost  the  central  point  of  the 


348 


APPENDIX  I 


picture.  Whitehall  Street  itself  is  shown  to  have  occupied  a 
shallow  depression  or  ravine  running  down  to  the  East  River. 

2.  The  course  of  the  modern  Broad  Street,  with  Cornells 
Melyn's  house  and  outbuildings  occupying  a  portion  of  it,  is 
clearly  shown. 

3.  The  ravine  of  "Burger's  Path,"  leading  down  to  the  river 
side,  can  be  distinguished  without  difficulty. 

4.  A  curious  structure  with  a  conical  or  pyramidal  roof,  which, 
from  the  perspective  of  the  "  Vanderdonck  View,"  appears  to  be 
a  hay  barrack  at  a  great  distance,  and  has  always  been  a  puzzling 
feature  in  that  view,  is  shown  in  the  Danckers  etching  as  just 
peeping  over  a  small  rise  of  ground  back  of  the  "  Great  Tavern," 
and  is  at  once  determined  beyond  any  reasonable  doubt  to  be  the 
low  belfry  tower  attached  to  the  old  Bark  Mill,  in  which  the  first 
church  services  were  held,  and  of  which  previous  mention  has 
already  been  made  in  the  text  of  this  work. 

5.  The  extreme  right  and  left  of  the  Danckers  etching  remain 
in  an  unfinished  condition,  just  as  the  artist  probably  left  it  upon 
terminating  his  camera  sketch.  The  shore  of  the  East  River,  in- 
stead of  turning  around  the  fort  in  the  direction  of  the  Hudson, 
is  continued  indefinitely  in  a  straight  line.  At  the  left-hand 
corner  of  the  etching  (being  at  the  right  of  the  true  view),  is  what 
appears  to  be  an  almost  mountainous  elevation  of  land,  which  of 
course  could  never  have  occupied  that  spot.  This  was  evidently 
a  misconception  of  the  artist's  rough  lines  of  the  foliage  of  the 
thick  clump  of  trees  which  is  well  known  to  have  occupied  the  site  of 
the  present  Hanover  Square  and  its  vicinity,  upon  the  river  bank. 

Some  difficulties  in  respect  to  the  buildings  in  the  Danckers 
View  are  encountered.  The  old  church  building  upon  the  water 
side  is  by  no  means  shown  as  clearly  as  it  is  in  the  Vanderdonck 
View ;  on  the  contrary,  the  houses  seem  at  this  point  to  be  thrown 
forwards  towards  the  river  shore  into  a  position  which  they  could 
not  have  actually  occupied.  This  leads  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
Danckers  View  was  a  panoramic  one,  i.  e. ,  the  point  of  view  was 
changed,  in  order  to  make  the  houses  in  the  vicinity  of  the  "  Great 
Tavern"  show  in  better  perspective.  It  appears  to  have  been 
just  at  the  site  of  the  old  church  where  the  two  views  have  been 
joined  together,  and  the  joining  of  the  views  has  been  so  unskil- 
fully performed  that  the  church  has  been  distorted  or  entirely 
concealed. 


APPENDIX  I 


349 


A  curious  feature  of  the  Danckers  etching  is  that  it  contains 
the  silly  addition  of  the  sprawling  human  figure  suspended  by  the 
waist  from  the  crane  upon  the  river  side,  as  also  another  figure 
dangling  from  the  adjacent  gallows.  Instances  of  capital  punish- 
ment actually  carried  into  effect  at  New  Amsterdam  are  very  rare, 
—  so  far,  at  any  rate,  as  the  records  show,  —  and  are  mostly 
confined  to  cases  arising  in  the  garrison  of  the  fort,  or  in  the  naval 
service,  and  the  body  of  a  criminal  swinging  from  the  gallows 
could  never  have  been  an  ordinary  sight.  If  Heermans  was 
indeed  the  artist  of  this  view,  it  is  very  probable  that  the  addi- 
tion of  the  figures  was  made  by  way  of  lampoon  upon  Director- 
General  Stuyvesant's  administration,  Heermans  being  at  this  time 
in  high  enmity  with  the  Director  and  with  the  Secretary  Van  Tien- 
hoven.  Upon  the  published  view  of  Vanderdonck,  the  figures 
did  not  appear;  but  in  the  much  later  nondescript  sketch,  of  little 
worth,  sometimes  called  the  "  Montanus  View,"  they  do  appear,  the 
gallows  being  garnished  in  that  view  with  no  less  than  three 
imaginary  culprits. 


APPENDIX  II 


THE  DESCENDANTS  OF  CORNELIS  MELYN 

TTT  may  be  not  without  interest  to  prosecute  a  few  inquiries  as 
JJ^  to  the  descendants  of  Cornelis  Melyn,  whose  career  at  New 
Amsterdam  has  been  dwelt  upon  at  some  length  in  the  text 
of  this  work  (pages  94  to  125),  and  whom  the  author  is  inclined 
more  and  more  to  regard  as  the  central  figure  of  his  day  in  New 
Netherland. 

When  Cornelis  Melyn  brought  his  family  to  New  Amsterdam 
about  the  year  1641,  it  consisted  of  his  wife  Jannetje  and  three 
children,  so  far  as  we  can  learn.  Of  these  his  daughter  Cornelia 
was  at  this  time  about  thirteen  years  of  age,  and  she  seems  to 
have  been  the  eldest  of  the  children.  A  son  whose  name  is  not 
furnished  to  us  is  said  to  have  been  drowned  in  the  wreck  of  the 
"Princess  "  in  1647,  when  as  a  lad  he  was  accompanying  his 
father  to  the  Netherlands,  and  the  third  of  Melyn's  children 
appears  to  have  been  his  son  Jacob,  who  reached  years  of 
maturity. 

After  the  Melyns  reached  New  Amsterdam,  three  of  their  chil- 
dren were  baptized  in  the  Dutch  Church  there;  namely,  Susanna, 
on  the  14th  of  June,  1643;  Magdaleen,  on  the  3d  of  March,  1645; 
and  Isaac,  on  the  22d  of  July,  1646.  Of  the  first  two  of  these 
we  have  no  further  information,  and  they  may  have  died  young; 
but  Isaac  grew  up,  and  was  long  a  resident  of  New  York.  It 
has  been  shown  in  that  portion  of  this  work  which  is  above 
alluded  to,  that,  persecuted  and  harassed  by  Director  Stuyve- 
sant  for  the  part  he  had  taken  in  the  affairs  of  New  Netherland, 
Cornelis  Melyn  retired  with  his  son  Jacob,  in  1657,  to  the  New 
Haven  Colony,  and  that  there,  together  with  his  son,  he  took  the 
oath  of  allegiance  to  the  English  government.  Although  he  oc- 
casionally visited  New  Amsterdam  during  the  next  five  or  six 
years,  he  appears  to  have  maintained  his  residence  at  New 


APPENDIX  II 


351 


Haven,  but  of  the  details  of  his  life  there  we  are  ignorant;  they 
would  undoubtedly  be  interesting,  if  known,  and  might  indeed 
form  an  important  chapter  in  the  history  of  the  English  conquest 
of  New  York  in  1664,  for  Cornelis  Melyn  was  a  man  who  was 
most  tenacious  and  unflinching  in  his  purposes,  and  there  is  not 
the  least  reason  to  suppose  that  he  had  forgotten  Stuyvesant's 
treatment  of  himself.  Certain  it  is  that  from  some  reason  he 
was  jealously  watched  to  the  last,  both  by  Stuyvesant  and  by  the 
officers  of  the  West  India  Company  in  the  Netherlands.  If,  how- 
ever, he  had  on  foot  any  machinations  against  the  rule  of  the 
West  India  Company,  we  have  no  reason  to  believe  that  he  lived 
to  see  them  carried  out,  for  no  allusions  to  him  can  be  found 
later  than  about  the  beginning  of  the  year  1663. 

In  the  mean  time  Melyn's  oldest  daughter  Cornelia  and  her 
young  brother  Isaac  remained  in  New  Amsterdam,  as  did  also 
(for  a  large  portion  of  the  time,  at  any  rate)  Melyn's  wife 
Jannetje.  Cornelia  Melyn,  as  already  stated,  had  married,  in 
1647,  Captain  Jacobus  Loper,  and  he,  after  a  short  married 
life,  having  died,  leaving  her  a  widow  with  two  children,  Jacobus 
and  Jannetje,  she  married,  on  the  7th  of  April,  1653,  Jacobus 
Schellinger  of  Amsterdam. 

The  Schellingers  of  Amsterdam  were  at  this  time  a  well-to-do 
family,  who  seem  to  have  been  quite  largely  engaged  in  mercan- 
tile affairs.  Some  of  them  were  noticeably  men  of  thrift,  and 
the  author's  attention  has  been  called  to  the  "Kohier,"  or  Assess- 
ment list  of  Amsterdam  for  the  year  1631,  upon  which  such  a 
man  as  Kiliaen  van  Rensselaer  appears  assessed  for  50,000  florins 
only;  while  Hillebrant  Schellinger,  "out  schepen,"  is  assessed  at 
70,000;  Cornelis  Gerritsz  Schellinger  for  70,000,  and  Cornelis 
Schellinger  the  elder  at  36,000  florins. 

Jacobus  Schellinger  was  likewise  engaged  in  mercantile  business 
at  New  Amsterdam,  where  he  is  said  to  have  come  in  the  interest 
of  an  uncle  at  Amsterdam,  whose  name,  as  would  appear  from 
allusions  in  some  of  the  records,  was  Pieter  Toom.  Schellinger 
seems  to  have  resided  in  New  Amsterdam  for  a  period  of  some 
twelve  or  thirteen  years  after  his  marriage  to  Cornelia  Melyn  or 
Loper,  in  1653.  During  that  period  he  had  four  children  bap- 
tized in  the  Dutch  Church;  namely,  Willem,  on  March  8,  1654; 
Catalyntje  or  Catherine,  on  April  19,  1656;  Abraham,  on  Sept. 
20,  1662;  and  Daniel,  on  Juiy  19,  1665.    The  name  of  Jacobus 


852 


APPENDIX  II 


Schellinger  does  not,  it  is  true,  appear  in  the  assessment  list  of 
the  town  in  April,  1665,  but  that  of  Cornelis  Melyn  does,  though 
there  is  much  reason  to  believe  that  he  was  not  living  at  this 
time;  and  there  seems  to  be  but  little  doubt  that  it  is  the  Melyn 
property  which  is  referred  to  in  the  list,  and  that  this  property 
was  in  the  occupation  of  the  Melyn  family,  including  Jacobus 
Schellinger  and  his  wife  and  children. 

Of  the  immediate  descendants  of  Cornelis  Melyn  we  have  seen 
(page  125  of  this  work)  that  his  youngest  son  Isaac  had  died 
prior  to  1722,  leaving  only  one  child  by  his  wife  Temperance, 
daughter  of  William  Loveridge  of  Albany;  namely,  Joanna,  wife 
of  Jonathan  Dickinson.  Jacob  Melyn,  the  oldest  son,  married 
and  had  several  children  baptized  in  the  Dutch  Church ;  namely, 
Susanna  and  Jacob,  on  Oct.  3,  1674;  and  Daniel,  Samuel,  and 
Abigail  on  Aug.  7,  1677.  This  baptizing  of  his  children  in 
groups,  so  to  speak,  would  seem  to  indicate  that  Jacob  and  his 
family  were  sojourning  at  times  away  from  New  York.  He 
removed  to  Boston  in  his  latter  years,  as  previously  stated, 
and  no  information  has  been  obtained  as  to  whether  his  name 
or  lineage  still  continues. 

Of  Cornelis  Melyn's  daughter  Cornelia,  however,  the  descend- 
ants are  still  living  in  considerable  number.  She,  with  her  hus- 
band, Jacobus  Schellinger,  and  with  her  children,  remained,  as  it 
would  seem,  in  New  York  until  1666  or  1667,  when  they  removed 
to  the  English  settlement  of  Easthampton  upon  the  eastern  ex- 
tremity of  Long  Island. 

The  causes  which  led  a  distinctively  Dutch  family  to  quit  their 
associations  of  many  years  and  the  society  of  their  countrymen, 
for  the  purpose  of  taking  up  their  residence  in  a  purely  English 
community,  and  the  reasons  why  these  new-comers  were  unhesi- 
tatingly accepted  among  a  people  proud  of  their  English  birth  or 
descent,  not  particularly  desirous  of  additions  to  their  organiza- 
tion, and  abundantly  disposed  to  scrutinize  rigidly  all  new  appli- 
cations for  membership,  on  account  of  the  questions  of  the 
rights  in  commonage  which  were  involved,  would  undoubtedly 
be,  if  fully  known,  an  interesting  episode  in  the  history  of  the 
colonization  of  the  New  York  towns.  That  the  full  details  of 
this  affair  would  throw  light  upon  the  mutual  relations,  now  little 
understood,  of  Cornelis  Melyn,  Govert  Loockermans,  Isaac  Aller- 
ton,  and  perhaps  Jacob  Steendam,  with  each  other  and  with  the 


APPENDIX  II 


353 


New  Haven  and  Connecticut  colonies,  there  cannot  be  much 
question.  The  Easthampton  settlement  was  a  distinct  depend- 
ency of  the  mainland  colonies,  Governors  Eaton  of  New  Haven 
and  Hopkins  of  Connecticut  having  made  the  original  Indian 
purchase  in  1648,  as  trustees  for  the  settlers.  The  trading  as 
well  as  the  political  relations  were  close  between  the  new  settle- 
ment and  New  Haven,  and  it  was  doubtless  through  New  Haven 
that  the  attention  of  the  Melyn  family  was  directed  to  East- 
hampton; the  immediate  cause  of  their  breaking  up  the 
domestic  arrangements  which  had  so  long  prevailed  is  quite 
likely  to  have  been  the  fact  that  the  two  sons  of  Cornells  Melyn 
had  now  grown  up  to  manhood  and  were  perhaps  desirous  of 
establishing  themselves  upon  their  small  patrimony  in  New 
York. 

Whatever  the  causes  may  have  been,  we  find  Jacobus  Schel- 
linger  in  October,  16G7,  purchasing  from  one  Benjamin  Conkling 
the  rights  or  a  part  of  them  which  had  previously  pertained  to  an 
earlier  colonist,  Andrew  Miller,  whose  "home  lot"  (now  acquired 
by  Schellinger)  was  a  capacious  plot  of  about  twenty  acres  situ- 
ated upon  the  north  side  of  the  main  street  of  Easthampton,  about 
in  the  middle  of  the  present  village. 

As  the  family  of  Jacobus  Schellinger,  on  their  journey  down 
to  Easthampton,  emerged  from  the  two  or  three  miles  of  wood- 
land road  which  lay  between  their  new  home  and  the  sloop  which 
had  brought  them  to  the  "  Three-Mile  Harbor,"  —  the  port  of  East- 
hampton in  Gardiner's  Bay, — they  could  see  before  them  the 
fields  of  the  new  settlement,  stretching  in  long  strips,  as  at  the 
present  day,  towards  the  dark  oak  woods  which  surrounded  them, 
and  could  doubtless  hear,  as  one  may  hear  now,  the  quail  piping  to 
one  another  in  the  solitary  back  lots.  Sixteen  or  seventeen  years 
of  cultivation  had  checkered  the  plain  with  alternating  patches 
of  wheat  and  rye,  of  maize  and  tobacco,  and  near  the  houses 
here  and  there  a  young  orchard  was  growing  up,  or  upon  spots  of 
greensward,  the  flax  lay  rotting  in  long  brownish  rows.  Along 
the  capacious  village  street,  lined  by  a  couple  of  score  of  low 
thatched  cottages  (some  probably  still  of  their  original  log  con- 
struction), no  rows  of  great  elms  stretched  as  at  present,  but  the 
grass  grew  thickly  in  its  broad  space  where  perhaps  the  cattle, 
just  returned  from  the  Common  Pasture,  gathered  at  their  owners' 
bars  and  gates,  or  at  the  farther  end  of  the  street  crowded  to 

23 


354 


APPENDIX  II 


drink  at  the  Town  Pond.  Upon  the  grassy  bank  (designed  for  a 
burial-ground)  beyond  the  pond  stood  the  little  thatched  church, 
and  still  farther  in  the  distance,  beyond  the  green  slopes  of  the 
"Calf  Pasture/*  the  white  sand  dunes  shut  out  the  ocean. 

Here  Jacobus  Schellinger  and  his  family  soon  merged  into  the 
English  community  about  them;  in  the  course  of  the  next  genera- 
tion nothing  but  the  name  remained  to  show  an  origin  different 
from  that  of  the  Mulfords  and  Hedges,  the  Strattons  and  Hands 
surrounding  them,  and  we  find  one  of  the  grandsons  of  Cornelia 
Melyn,  bearing  the  singular  name  of  Lion  Loper,  in  honor  of 
Lion  Gardiner,  the  great  man  of  the  settlement  and  proprietor 
of  Gardiner's  Island,  into  whose  family  some  of  the  descendants 
of  Cornelia  Melyn  appear  to  have  married  at  an  early  date. 
Jacobus  Schellinger  was  one  of  the  most  well-to-do  men  of  the 
community,  and  is  early  assessed  at  the  second  highest  figure 
in  the  town.  With  him  and  his  immediate  family  had  come  his 
stepson,  Jacobus  or  James  Loper,  then  a  young  man  just  grown 
up,  who  soon  acquired  the  grant  of  a  new  parcel  of  land  a  short 
distance  east  of  his  stepfather's  home,  on  the  north  side  of  the 
road  to  the  Three-Mile  Harbor.  Both  Loper  and  his  stepfather 
turned  their  attention  at  an  early  date  to  the  whalefishing  in- 
dustry, then  profitable  at  the  eastern  end  of  Long  Island,  and 
they  were  engaged  in  it  for  a  number  of  years.  They  employed 
largely  for  their  whaling  crews  the  neighboring  Montauk  Indians, 
who  were  expert  in  this  craft;  and  there  is  an  agreement  still 
extant  by  Schellinger  and  Loper  with  thirteen  of  the  Indians, 
bearing  date  July  4,  1675,  in  which  the  former  agree  to  furnish 
the  necessary  boats,  and  to  cart  the  products  of  the  fishery  a 
distance  not  exceeding  two  miles  for  the  purpose  of  trying  or 
boiling;  the  Indians  to  receive  one  half  of  the  profits.  The 
Schellingers  indeed  appear  to  have  been  somewhat  prone  to 
dealings  with  the  Indians,  and  a  curious  indenture  of  apprentice- 
ship still  exists,  important  as  showing  at  what  an  early  date 
domestic  relations  were  established  between  the  Easthampton 
settlers  and  the  Montauk  Indians.  In  this  document  a  certain 
"Muntauket  Indian  commonly  named  Papasequin"  and  his  wife 
agree  with  Jacobus  Schellinger  and  his  son  Jacob  to  bind  out 
to  the  latter  14 our  sonn  named  Quausuch,  ould  now  above  seaven 
yeares;"  the  time  of  apprenticeship  was  to  run  from  "primo 
Aprill  at  ye  yeare  eightie  eight,"  and  was  to  extend  to  April  1, 


APPENDIX  II 


355 


1698,  at  which  time,  besides  certain  payments  to  the  father,  in 
case  of  good  behavior,  etc.,  of  the  lad,  the  latter  was  to  receive 
the  sum  of  ten  pounds  in  money  or  goods. 

The  Schellingers  at  Easthampton  were  not  altogether  cut  off 
from  their  former  life,  for  here  Cornelia  Schellinger's  brother 
Isaac  occasionally  brought  in  his  vessel  to  the  Harbor  with 
freight  from  New  York.  One  of  his  receipts  for  freight  for  the 
return  voyage  is  still  extant.  It  is  dated  "one  board  the  barke, 
25  May,  1680,"  and  shows  that  he  took  with  him  "tobacco  pips," 
from  the  fields  of  Easthampton,  linen  and  woollen  from  its 
domestic  manufactures,  whalebone  and  oil  from  the  fisheries,  and 
the  unsold  remainder  apparently  of  a  mercantile  shipment,  from 
William  Darvall,  a  well-known  merchant  of  New  York,  embrac- 
ing ironware,  "Sarge  and  Cersey,"  and  gunpowder. 

Jacobus  Schellinger  resided  at  Easthampton  for  more  than  a 
quarter  of  a  century,  and  there  two  of  his  children,  Cornelis  and 
Jacob,  were  born.  He  died  on  the  17th  of  June,  1693,  aged 
sixty-seven  years,  but  his  wife  Cornelia  outlived  him  nearly 
another  quarter  of  a  century,  dying  on  Feb.  25,  1717,  aged 
eighty-eight  years.  Both  are  supposed  to  have  been  buried  in 
the  old  churchyard  of  Easthampton.  It  was  a  few  years  before 
the  death  of  his  father  that  Jacobus  Schellinger's  son  Abraham, 
then  a  man  of  mature  years,  had  his  attention  directed  to  the 
fertile  lands  lying  two  or  three  miles  east  of  the  village  of  East- 
hampton, at  what  was  called  by  the  Indians  Amagansett.  Here 
he  procured  a  large  grant  in  1690,  and  here  he  and  his  youngest 
brother  Jacob  are  supposed  to  have  been  the  pioneers  of  the 
village  of  Amagansett,  the  most  easterly  hamlet  upon  Long 
Island;  his  name  is  believed  to  be  still  commemorated  in 
"Abram's  Landing,"  a  small  haven  upon  Gardiner's  Bay  about 
a  mile  east  of  Amagansett,  and  in  "Abram's  Path,"  a  narrow 
wood  road  in  the  same  vicinity. 

After  the  death  of  Jacobus  Schellinger,  the  homestead  at  East- 
hampton appears  to  have  remained  in  the  possession  of  his  oldest 
son  Willem,  but  in  the  course  of  time  to  have  passed  to  a  branch 
of  the  Gardiner  family.  As  for  Abraham  Schellinger,  the  pioneer 
of  Amagansett,  he  seems  to  have  died  in  the  early  part  of  the 
year  1713  (x.  s.).  His  will,  which  is  to  be  found  in  the  Surro- 
gate's Office  of  New  York,  disposes  of  his  land  at  "Amugonst" 
to  his  oldest  son  William;  while  to  his  son  Abraham  he  devises 


356 


APPENDIX  II 


a  half-interest  which  he  held  in  Plumb  Island,  between  Long 
Island  and  the  Connecticut  shore;  and  to  another  son,  Isaac,  he 
gives  an  interest  in  three  tracts  of  land  in  the  county  of  West- 
chester, New  York.  Besides  these  three  sons,  Abraham  Schel- 
linger  also  left  a  young  son,  Zachariah,  and  three  daughters. 

Like  that  of  her  mother,  Jannetje  Melyn,  Cornelia  Schellinger's 
life  was  long  and  eventful;  her  memories  must  have  embraced 
Antwerp  in  its  decaying  splendor,  and  New  Amsterdam  with  no 
splendor  at  all,  — merely  a  few  thatched  cottages  around  the  fort. 
She  remembered  Staten  Island  as  an  unbroken  wilderness,  and 
her  father's  plantation  there,  twice  destroyed  by  Indians,  and  the 
days  of  panic  and  distress  in  the  little  house  on  the  Graft  in  New 
Amsterdam.  Then  came  the  long  struggles  of  her  father  against 
colonial  maladministration  and  his  self-imposed  exile  from  New 
Amsterdam,  during  many  years  of  which  the  care  of  his  family 
had  devolved  largely  upon  herself.  She  had  seen  the  village  of 
huts  at  New  Amsterdam  grow  into  a  town  of  importance,  and 
had  seen  the  English  rule  supplant  that  of  the  Dutch.  Of  her 
father's  two  great  enemies  so  well  known  to  her,  she  could  re- 
member how  the  life  of  one  had  closed  in  horror  in  the  wreck  of 
the  "Princess"  (when  her  own  brother  and  her  pastor  also  per- 
ished) ;  and  how  the  other  had  ended  his  days  in  seclusion  and 
in  bitter  humiliation  at  his  farmhouse  up  the  Bouwery  Lane 
on  Manhattan  Island.  In  her  latter  years  she  found  half  a 
century  of  quiet  life  filled  with  domestic  duties,  but  besides  her 
son  Abraham  she  was  also  fated  to  see  her  youngest  son  Jacob 
grow  up  to  adult  manhood,  and  die  before  her  in  the  year  1714. 
He,  as  it  appears,  had  married  into  the  English  family  of  Baker 
at  Easthampton,  and  left  a  family  of  eight  children  surviving 
him.  Through  the  various  branches  which  have  been  enumer- 
ated, the  descendants  of  Cornelia  Melyn  are  still  to  be  found  in 
large  numbers  in  the  vicinity  of  Easthampton,  as  previously 
stated,  but  it  is  not  within  the  design  of  this  note  to  pursue 
the  later  genealogy. 


INDEX 


Abrahamsen,  Jacob,  316. 
Achter  Col,  destroyed   by  the  Indians, 
178. 

Adriaensen,  Maryn,  at  the  "  Shrove  Tide 
Dinner,"  103;"  purchases  land  on  East 
River,  280;  early  life,  291;  association 
with  Jan  Damen,  292;  heads  petition 
of  1643  to  attack  the  Indians,  203 ;  his 
assault  on  Director  Kieft,  294;  sent  to 
the  Netherlands,  295. 

Adriaensen,  Willem,  280,  281,  285. 

"  Adventure,"  the,  galley,  255  et  seq. 

Aertsen,  Govert,  236,  240,  2u8. 

Allaerdt  view  of  New  Amsterdam,  244, 
note. 

Allerton,  Isaac,  42,  196;  association  with 
Govert  Loockermans,  237  ;  his  warehouse, 
331;  early  life,  332;  at  the  Plymouth 
Colony,  333;  at  New  Haven,  334;  busi- 
ness relations  at  New  Amsterdam,  335; 
establishes  trading  house,  335;  "  Aller- 
ton's  Building,"  336  ;  attack  on  his  ware- 
house by  the  Indians,  336.  See  Ap- 
pendix II. 

Allerton,  Isaac,  junior.  334,  337. 

Amagansett,  Long  Island,  descendants  of 
Cornells  Melyn  at.    See  Appendix  II. 

Ambrosius,  Moses,  86,  note. 

Andriessen,  Pieter,  164;  establishment  on 
Long  Island,  165;  captured  by  Indians, 
166  et  seq.,  170. 

Ann  Street,  311.  See  Van  Tie-nhoven's 
Lane,  339. 

Anthony,  Allard,  47.  54,  60,  89.  285. 

Antwerp  in  the  17th  century,  95  et  seq. 

Arnhem,  projected  village  of,  219. 

Atwater,  Joshua,  231. 

Augustinus,  Jan,  285,  note. 


Bakek,  John,  Capt.,  affray  with  William 
Faterson,  199  et  stq.  ;  203",  note. 

Baptist  Church,  first  in  New  York,  318. 

Barentsen,  Simon,  126,  note. 

Bark  Mill,  the,  155,  Appendix  L 

Barn  of  West  India  Co.,  182. 

Bartre,  William,  270,  note. 

Bastions  of  the  Palisades,  273,  274. 

Baxter,  George,  32,  note;  179,  180,  237. 

Baxter,  Thomas,  property  confiscated,  19. 
See  32,  note ;  captures  a  Dutch  vessel,  42. 

Bavnrd,  Anna,  286. 

Bayard,  Balthazar,  244. 


I  Bayard,  Nicholas,  174,  203,  note,  246. 
Beaver  Path,  the,  33,  note. 
Beaver  Street.    See  Prinsen  Straet. 
Bedlo,  Isaac,  49,  197,  198. 
Beeckman,  Willem,  bouwery  at  Harlem, 

72;  306,  328.    See  also  Beekman. 
Beekman,  Jochem,  150. 
Beekman'3  Orchard,  328.    See  Beeckman. 
Beekman  Street,  328. 

Bellamont,  Earl  of,  Governor  of  New  York, 
253,  254,  259. 

Bergen,  Jacob  Hansen,  301,  note. 

Bescher,  Thomas.    See  Betts. 

Bestevaers  Kreupelbosch.  See  "  Swamp, 
The." 

Betts,  Thomas,  76. 

Bicklev,  William,  124. 
!  "  Black  John,"  11. 
i  Planck,  Juriaen,  194. 
j  Blauveldt,  Captain,  of  the  privateer  "  La 
Garce,"  69  et  seq. 

Bleecker,  Jan  Jansen,  173,  note. 

Bleyck,  Ariaentje,  49. 

Blockhouse,  the,  2,  151,  152. 

Blommaert,  Adriaen,  Capt.,  128. 

Blommaerts  Vly,  9,  66,  81,  104,  152. 

Bogardus,  Everardus,  Dominie,  his  house 
on  Winckel  Straet,  14  et  seq.;  marries 
Annetje  Janse,  16;  his  bouwery,  16; 
attacks  Director  Kieft's  Indian  policy, 
24;  suit  for  slander  by  01  off  van  Cort- 
landt,  26;  drowned  in  wreck  of  the 
"Princess,"  29,  59;  comment  on  Kieft's 
pamphlet  of  vindication,  106.  See  158, 
his  partv  at  the  City  Tavern,  180.  See 
294,  299". 

Bohemia,  manor  of,  281,  289,  290. 

Boon,  Francis,  193. 

Bout,  Jan  Evertsen,  233. 

Bradford,  William,  his  house,  233,  note. 

Bradlev,  Henrv,  249. 

Bradley,  Samuel,  249,  251. 

Bradley,  Sarah,  marries  William  Cox,  249; 
marries  John  Oort,  250;  marries  Capt. 
Wm.  Kidd,  251;  marries  Christopher 
Rousby.  her  will,  etc.,  266. 

Bradley," Thomas,  Capt.,  249. 

Brazier,  Henry,  326;  house  on  the  East 
River,  343;  ordered  to  quit  New  Amster- 
dam, 344;  troubles  with  Dirck  Claessen, 
345. 

Bresar.    See  Brazier. 

Brewery  of  the  West  India  Co.,  34,  178 ; 


358 


INDEX 


of  Jacob  van  Couwenhoven,  147,  et  seq., 
161;  of  Jan  Damen,  2U8:  of  Jan  Vinje, 
300. 

Bridge,  at  Broad  Street,  5,  88,  94,  152. 
Bridge  Lane.    See  Brugh  Steegh. 
Bridge  Street.    See  Hrugh  Straet. 
Bridges,  Charles,  185,  l'J4  et  seq.,  218. 
Broad  Street.    See  Blommaerts  Vly,  The 

Ditch,  and  Heere  Graft. 
Broad  Street,  gate  at,  274. 
Broen,  Tomas,  270,  note. 
Bronck,  Jonas,  108,  104, 193. 
Brouwer,  Adam,  24. 
Brouwer  Straet,  0,  7,  note,  69. 
Brown,  William,  09. 
Bruce,  John  and  Lysbet,  318,  note. 
Brugh  Steegh,  33; "closed,  34. 
Brugh  Straet,  0. 

Brutell,  Peter  and  Margaretha,  318,  note. 
Bruynsen,  Hage,  321. 
Buccaneers,  the,  210. 
Burger,  Engeltje.    See  Mans,  Engeltje. 
Burger,  Hermanns,  234. 
Burger,  Johannes,  234. 
Burger's  Mill,  Sluice,  and  Kill,  232. 
Burger's  Path,  222,  224,  243.    See  Appen- 
dix I. 

Bushwick  Creek  and  Bushwick,  323. 


Cabins,  early,  at  New  Amsterdam,  2. 
Calder,  Jochem,  163. 
Canapaukah  Creek,  168,  228,  231. 
Capske,  The.    See  Schreyers  Hoek. 
Carpenel,  Jan  Jacobsen,  164. 
Carstensen,  Claes,  161,  162;  Indian  inter- 
preter. 162.  note. 
Catiemuts  Hoek,  4,  330. 
Cattle  Pens,  the,  275. 
Cedar,  the  privateer,  214. 
Central  Park,  New  York,  72. 
Chatham  Square.  331. 
Cherrv  Garden,  the,  338. 
Cherry  Street,  339. 

Church,  Dutch,  of  1026  in  Barkmill,  155  et 
seq.:  of  1633,  16;  description  of,  58;  its 
parsonage  and  stable,  59;  becomes  a  pri- 
vate house,  60;  147,  Appendix  I.:  of 
1642  (in  fort),  17,  58,  note,  59,  109,  148. 

Church  Lane,  57,  58,  59. 

City  Tavern.    See  Stadts  Herbergh. 

Claaver  Weytje,  275,  285,  note,  295,  298. 

Claessen,  Dirck,  the  potter,  345. 

Claessen,  Sibout,  125,  126. 

Cleer,  George,  341,  342. 

Cliff  Street,  311,  317. 

Clock,  Abraham  Martensen,  222. 

Clopper,  Cornelis,  279,  302. 

Coenties  Alley.    See  Stadt  Huvs  Lane. 

Coersen,  Arent,  284. 

Coersen,  Barent,  170. 

Cohn,  or  "  Cawyn,"  Jacob.  86.  note. 

Colve,  Governor,  204  ;  demolition  of  build- 
ings by.  274. 

Common  Pasture,  the  Second.  4;  the  First, 
62.  See  also  Schaapen  Weide,  152.  See 
271,  note,  311,  330,  338. 


Companv's  VI v,  the,  81. 

Coorn,  Nicholas,  180,  238. 

Cornclissen,  Albei  t,  301. 

Cornelissen,  Dirck,  225,  239,  240,  242,  245, 

270,  note,  341. 
Cornelissen,  Lourens,  skipper,  298, 299,  303. 
Cornelissen,  Pieter  (Timinerman),35  et  seq., 

garden  of,  on  Brouwer  Straet,  35;  his 

mill  on  Wessell's  Creek,  30. 
Cornell,  Rebecca,  190. 
Cornell,  Sarah,  marries  Thomas  Willet, 

193 ;  marries  Charles  Bridges,  194.  See 

195. 

Cornell,  Thomas,  193. 

Corstiaensen,  Hendrick,  151. 

Cousseau,  Jacques,  158,  note. 

Cox,  Alice,  "alias  Bono,"  249. 

Cox,  Sarah.    See  Bradley,  Sarah. 

Cox,  William,  249,  250,  251. 

Craie,  Teunis,  82  et  seq.;  his  houses  on  the 

Ditch,  84;  sells  house  to  the  Jews,  80; 

his  Long  Island  grant,  89;  small  house 

on  Broad  Street,  90. 
Cregier,  Martin,  Captain,  243. 
Croesens,  Claas,  270,  note. 
Custom  House,  first,  of  New  York,  53, 
Cuville,  or  Cuvilje,  Adriana,  300;  marries 

Jan  Damen,  307 ;  her  children,  307. 


Dacosta,  Joseph,  86,  note,  147. 

Damen,  Jan  Jansen,  leases  land  of  the 
West  India  Co.,  9;  wounds  Philip  Ge- 
raerdy,  11;  trespasses  of  his  cattle,  02. 
See  81.  Shrovetide  dinner  at  his  house, 
102 ;  visits  the  Netherlands  and  pur- 
chases the  "Great  Bouwerv"  for  Stuv- 
vesant,  119,  note;  148,  152,  240;  the 
outhoek  of  his  farm,  208,  note,  271,  274, 
275,  285 ;  association  with  Marvn  Adri- 
aensen,  292,  295,  297;  his  brewery,  298; 
marriage  to  Adriana  Cuville,  307.  See 
322,  324,  328. 

Danckers,  Justus,  view  of  New  Amster- 
dam, 49,  note.    Appendix  I.,  129,  155. 

D'Andradi,  Salvador.  86. 

Danielse,  "Mother,"  Anneken,  270,  note. 

Danker  and  Sluvter,  the  missionaries,  321; 
Journal  of,  306. 

Danker  and  Sluvter,  view  of  New  Amster- 
dam, 55,  186,  "189,  243,  note,  335. 

Davidson,  Joris,  124.  note. 

Decker,  Johan  de,  42. 

De  Foreest,  Hendrick,  71. 

De  Foreest,  Isaac,  buys  old  church,  59;  his 
house,  71  et  seq. ;  a  pioneer  of  Harlem, 
72;  his  brewerv,  73,  148. 

De  Groot,  Willem  Pietersen,  345. 

De  Koningh,  Frederic,  Capt.,  179. 

De  La  Nov,  Abraham,  178. 

Delavall,  Thomas,  12,  note. 

De  Lucin:i,  Abraham,  86,  note. 

De  Meyer,  Nicholas,  148,  170,  308. 

De  Mever,  William,  171. 

De  Silfe,  Nicasius,  151,  169. 

De  Truv,  Philip,  301,  note;  his  house  on 
East  River  shore,  326,  335,  339. 


INDEX 


359 


Deutel  Bay,  83,  note,  327. 

De  Vos,  Mathew,  marries  widow  of  Philip 

Geraerdv,  12;  his  land  on  Hoogh  Straet, 

127. 

De  Vries,  David,  Captain,  his  account  of 
the  massacre  of  the  Indians  at  Pavonia, 
23  ;  his  grant  on  Staten  Island,  97. 

Dickenson,  Joanna,  125. 

Dillon,  Daniel,  attempts  to  burn  Wm.  Pat- 
erson's  house  in  New  York,  202. 

Dircksen,  Barent.  313,  314,  note. 

Dircksen,  Cornelis,  ferrvmau,  48,  66,  242, 
244,  245,  340. 

Dirt_v  Lane.    See  Slyck  Steegh,  154. 

"  Distelvink,  Den,"  —  poems  of  Jacob 
Steendam,  132  et  seq. 

Ditch,  the,  82,  83,  105,  123. 

Ditch  of  the  Palisades,  274. 

Dock,  the  public,  73. 

Doeckles,  Willem,  89. 

Dominicus,  Reynier,  308. 

Dominie's  Bouwery,  the,  16. 

Dominie's  Hoek,  16. 

Dongan,  Governor.  245. 

Doughty,  Francis,  Rev.,  219. 

Drisius,  Dominie  Samuel,  his  house,  49; 
land  in  the  Sheep  Pasture,  151. 

Duke's  Street.    See  Hoogh  Straet. 

Dutch  Kills,  the,  228. 

Du  Trieux.    See  De  Truy. 

Duyckink,  Evert,  the  glassmaker,  158,  221. 

Duvtts,  Laurens,  164. 

Dykman,  Jan,  163. 

Dyre,  William,  55. 


Eastfiampton,  Long  Island,  descendants 
of  Cornelis  Melyn  at.    See  Appendix 

Ebel,  Pieter,  181. 
Ellet's,  or  Elliott's  Alley,  173. 
Elliott,  Richard,  160,  note,  173. 
Ellsworth,  Stoffel,  65. 
Emott,  James,  259. 

Enekhuysen,  city  of,  in  the  17th  centurv, 
131. 

"English  Quarter,"  the,  192. 
Evertsen,  Wessell,  the  fisher,  171  et  seq., 
199. 

Exchange  Place.    See  Tuyn  Straet. 

Fair  Street.    See  Fulton  Street. 
Felle,  Simon,  150. 

Ferry  to  Long  Island,  6,  49 ;  leased  by 
Captain  Tomassen,  66;  hamlet  at,  319, 
339;  establishment  of,  340;  Eghbert  van 
Borsum,  ferry-master,  342. 

Fiscal,  House  o'f  the,  33. 

'•Five  Houses,"  the.  5,  13,  31;  confiscated 
by  the  English  and  demolished,  32 ;  at- 
tachment on,  by  George  Baxter,  32,  note. 

Fletcher,  Benjamin,  Colonel,  Governor  of 
New  York, '253.  255. 

Flodder,  Jacob.  272,  304,  note. 

Forbus,  Jan,  162. 

Forrester,  Andrew,  93,  note,  179. 


Fort  Amsterdam,  5,  7,  182. 
"Fortune  of  New  Netherland,"  ship  con- 
fiscated bv  Stuvvesant's  orders,  119, 178. 
Francen,  Bout,  314,  315. 
Frera,  David,  86,  note. 
Fulton  Street,  317,  324. 
Fyn,  Francis,  Capt.,  167. 


Gabry,  Pieter  and  Sons,  of  Amsterdam, 

53,  54,  284. 
Galma.    See  Jansen,  Sybrant. 
Garden  Street.    See  Tuvn  Straet. 
Garland,  John,  197,  198." 
Geraerdv,  Jan,  12. 

Geraerdv,  Philip,  keeps  the  "White  Horse 
Tavern,  7;  accidentally  wounded,  11; 
his  later  residence,  12,  63. 

Gerritsen,  Adriaen,  178. 

Gerritsen,  Philip,  178,  180. 

"  Gideon."  slave-ship.  42. 

Glazier  Street,  the,  233,  note. 

Glen,  Alexander.  See  Leendertsen,  Sander. 

Golden  Hill,  310. 

Gold  Street,  271,  note,  310. 

Goulder.  William,  341,  342. 

Gouwenbergh,  the,  297,  298,  310. 

Graham,  James,  Recorder,  is  mysteriously 
wounded,  318. 

'•  Great  Bouwery,''  the,  purchased  by  Di- 
rector Stuyvesant,  119,  note. 

Great  Tavern,  the.    See  Stadts  Herbergh. 

Great  Tree,  the,  325,  339. 

Green  Lane,  the,  297,  note. 


Haes.  Roeloff  Jansen,  47. 

Haie,  Jacob,  57, 162;  burning  of  his  farm- 
house, 169.    See  323. 

Hall,  Thomas,  his  house  at  "  The  Ferry,' 
325  et  seq.;  one  of  the  first  English  set- 
tlers, 327',  marries  Anna  Mitford,  327; 
prominent  hi  New  Amsterdam,  328,  337. 

Hanover  Square,  its  associations,  223.  See 
243,  note,  244,  Appendix  I. 

Hardenbrook,  Andries  and  Femmetje,  318, 
note. 

Harlem,  early  settlements  at,  72,  108. 
Harpendinck.  John,  316. 
Hartgers,  Pieter,  80. 

Hartgers  view  of  New  Amsterdam,  2,  note; 
155,  note. 

Heathcote,  George,  291. 

Heere  Graft,  82,  123,  149. 

Heermans  or  Herrman,  Augustyn,  50, 
note;  warehouse  of,  53;  financial  diffi- 
culties, 54;  residence  on  East  River,  281 ; 
his  early  life  in  Prague,  281  et  seq.\ 
enters  Wallenstein's  service,  283,  285; 
difficulties  with  Director  Stuyvesant, 
287;  deputized  to  visit  the  governor  of 
Maryland,  his  journey,  288;  his  artistic 
talents,  288,  note;  his  survey  and  map 
of  Maryland,  289;  manor  of  Bohemia, 
290 ;  supposed  artist  of  the  "  Yander- 
donck  view  of  New  Amsterdam,"  Ap- 
pendix I. 


360 


INDEX 


Hellekers,  Jacob,  306,  .321. 

Hendrickse,  Trvntje,  300. 

Hendricksen,  Claes,  208,  269,  276,  277. 

Hendricksen,  Harmeu,  1G8. 

Herrman,  Augustine.    See  Heermans. 

Hewit,  Kandel.  220. 

Hollar,  Wenceslas,  288,  note. 

Holmes,  George,  14,  326,  327. 

Hooghlandt,  Christopher,  198. 

Hoogh  Straet,  or  High  Street,  its  origin,  6, 

104;  straightened,'  123,  153,  176. 
Hoorn's  Hoek,  126,  note. 


Indians,  massacre  of  Weckquaskeek 
tribe,  1643,  22;  compensation  to  Mo- 
hawks for  destruction  of  their  house,  71; 
expedition  against  Earitans,  97;  massa- 
cre of  Weekquaskeeks,  103;  devastate 
Staten  Island  in  1043,  104;  their  incur- 
sions of  1655,  165;  destroy  Achter  Col, 
178;  attack  Allerton's  warehouse,  336. 

Isolated  plantations,  order  against,  169. 

Israel,  David,  86,  note. 


Jacobs,  Magdalentje,  148. 

Jacobsen,  Cornells,  313,  314,  315. 

Jacobsen,  Jan,  180. 

Jacobsen,  Rutger,  172  et  seq. 

Janse,  Annetje,  wife  of  Roeloff  Jansen, 

and  of  Dominie  Bogardus,  14  et  seq. ; 

spends  her  latter  years  at  Albany,  29. 

See  46. 

Janse,  Ariaentje,  marries  Govert  Loocker- 

mans,  237 ;  her  death,  241. 
Janse,  Hester,  146. 

Janse,  Marritje,  239,  240;  her  will,  slaves, 
etc.,  241,  note;  marries  Govert  Loocker- 
mans,  241;  previous  marriage  to  Dirck 
Cornelissen,  242.    See  245,  note,  276. 

Jansen,  Antony  van  Salee,  146. 

Jansen,  Antony  van  Vees,  313. 

Jansen,  Barent,  161,  162. 

Jansen,  Carsten,  158,  note. 

Jansen,  Cornelis,  159,  note. 

Jansen,  Harmanus,  270,  note. 

Jansen,  Hendrick,  baker,  14. 

Jansen,  Hendrick,  tailor,  sails  on  the 
"  Princess,"  27  ;  house  on  Hoogh  Straet, 
225,  229;  animosity  towards  Kieft,  229; 
fined  and  banished,  230 ;  his  widow,  277  ; 
land  on  East  River,  279  et  seq.,  285. 

Jansen,  Jan  van  St.  Obin.    See  St.  Obin. 

Jansen,  Michiel,  232,  note. 

Jansen,  Pieter,  280. 

Jansen,  Pieter,  Noorman,  162. 

Jansen,  Roeloff,  15. 

Jansen,  Sybrant,  Galma,  128. 

Jansen,  Tymen,  241,268,  note;  271,  master 
ship  carpenter  of  West  India  Co.,  275 
et  seq. 

Jansen,  Willem,  121. 

Jessup,  Edward,  193. 

Jews'  Lane,  the,  155,  note. 

Jews,  the,  in  New  Amsterdam,  84  et  seq. 
87,  synagogue  of,  87,  note,  160. 


Jochemsen,  Andries,  his  tavern,  268,  269. 

Jonas,  "  Tryn,"  mother  of  Annetje  Janse 
Bogardus,  15. 

Jorissen,  Burger,  his  first  house  on  Hoogh 
Straet,  104,  105,  128,  note,  128;  his  lane 
to  the  river.  Burger's  Bath,  222,  224; 
Burger's  smithy,  225,  230;  early  home, 
226;  comes  to  New  Amsterdam,  227 ;  his 
plantation  on  the  Dutch  Kills,  228.  See 
229.  Buys  Hendrick  Jansen's  house, 
230;  troubles  with  the  authorities  of 
New  Amsterdam,  231;  his  mill  and 
sluice,  231,  232;  new  dwelling,  232;  re- 
moves to  Long  Island,  233,  285. 


Kerfbyl,  Johannes,  Dr.,  159,  160. 

Kidd,  Sarah.    See  Bradley,  Sarah. 

Kidd,  William,  Captain,  marriage  to  Sarah 
Oort,  251;  residence  in  New  York,  251; 
modern  views  respecting,  252;  selected 
to  operate  against  the  pirates,  253 ;  his 
commission,  and  partners  in  the  English 
administration,  254;  his  picked  crew 
impres-ed  in  England,  254;  crew  filled 
out  at  New  York,  255  ;  mutiny  and  kill- 
ing of  William  .Moore,  255,  256,  note; 
alleged  piratical  depredations,  257 ;  crew 
breaks  up  and  he  reaches  West  Indies, 
258;  efforts  to  secure  pardon  from 
government,  259;  arrested  and  sent  to 
England,  260 ;  course  of  the  English  ad- 
ministration, 261;  his  so-called  "trials" 
for  murder  and  piracy,  261  et  seq.; 
counsel  refused  to  him,  263;  his  execu- 
tion and  confiscation  of  his  effects,  265. 

Kieft,  Willem,  Director-General,  his 
character,  22:  his  Indian  policy,  p.  22 
et  seq. ;  quarrel  with  Dominie  Bogar- 
dus, 24  et  seq. ;  drowned  in  wreck  of 
the  "Princess,"  29;  views  of  Hendrick 
Kip  respecting,  37 ;  at  Hans  Kiersted's 
wedding,  59,  91;  expedition  against 
Raritan  Indians,  97.  See  98 ;  designs 
against  the  Indians,  99;  his  propositions 
to  the  community,  100;  dissolves  the 
Committee  of  Twelve,  102;  at  the  dinner 
at  Damen's  house,  103  ;  his  pamphlet  of 
vindication,  106  ;  annoys  Cornelis  Melyn, 
107;  confiscates  Seger  Teunissen's  prop- 
erty, 107  :  surrenders  his  office  to  Stuy- 
ves'ant,  109;  denounced  by  Melyn  and 
Kuyter,  110 ;  criminal  charges  against 
Melyn  and  Kuyter,  111;  asks  forgive- 
ness in  wreck  of  "Princess,"  113,227; 
troubles  with  Hendrick  Jansen,  229,  230; 
his  apology  for  the  Indian  massacre, 
293;  assaulted  by  Maryn  Adriaensen, 
294,  299. 

Kiersted,  Dr.  Hans,  45  et  seq.  ;  his  mar- 
riage, 59,  63;  at  Dominie  Bogardus's 
partv,  180. 

Kiersted,  Hans,  Jr.,  244. 

Kiersted,  Jochem,  46,  194. 

"  Kint-in-'t-Water."  See  Pietersen,  Hen- 
drick. 

Kip,   Hendrick  Hendricksen,  the  tailor, 


INDEX 


361 


36  et  seq.;  refuses  advice  to  Director 
Kieftaud  his  Council,  38;  is  one  of  "  The 
Nine  Men,"  39. 

Kip,  Isaac,  40,  277,  320. 

Kip.  Jacob,  36;  his  house,  40. 

Kip's  Bav,  41. 

Klein,  Uldrich,  63. 

Kock,  Pieter,  tavern  on  Marckveldt,  10. 
Kolck  and  Kolck  Hoek,  330,  339,  3*6. 
Kolck,  the  little,  4. 

u  Koopal."  See  Stilman,  Jan  Hendricksen. 

Koorn.    See  Coorn. 

Kunst,  Jan  Barentsen,  162. 

Kuvter,  Jochem  Pietersen,  Capt.,  107  et 
seq.;  his  bouwery  of  Zegendaal,  10S; 
bouwery  destroyed  by  the  Indians,  109; 
brings  charges  against  Kieft,  110;  pro- 
secuted by  Kieft,  fii.ed  and  banished, 
111;  escapes  from  the  wreck  of  the 
"Princess,"  113;  appeals  to  States- 
General,  114.  115.  Makes  his  peace 
with  Stuvvesaut,  120;  murdered  at  Har- 
lem, 121, 164. 


Labadists.    See  Danker  and  Sluyter. 

Labatie,  or  Labbate,  Jan,  71. 

La  Chair,  Solomon  Pietersen,  the  notary, 

his  tavern,  87  et  seq. ;  later  house,  218, 

note. 

"  La  Garce,"  privateer,  41,  54,  69. 
Land  Poort,  the,  273,  274. 
Lawrence,  John,  295,  337. 
Leendertsen,  Cornelis,  business  associate 

of  Govert  Loockermans,  237,  239,  276, 

311,  note,  335,  339,  341. 
Leendertsen,  Sander,  302;  his  house  in  the 

Smits  Vly,  303;  lands  at  Schenectady, 

304. 

Leisler,  Elsie.    See  Elsie  Tvmense.  See 

245.  247,  248. 
Leisler,  Jacob,  242,  245.    See  245  et  seq. ; 

his  execution  for  treason,  247. 
Leisler,  Jacob,  Jr.,  248. 
Levy,  Asher.  85,  86,  note. 
Lewis,  Thomas,  233. 

Lindsay,  Alexander.  See  Leendertsen, 
Sander. 

Litscho,  Sergeant  Danipl,  his  tavern,  10, 
225,  267,  270,  note,  272.  276,  277,  278. 

Livingston,  Robert,  253,  254. 

"  Long  Mary,"  301,  note. 

Loockermans,  Anneken,  237,  note,  246. 

Loockerinans,  Govert,  47,  76,  129;  his 
house  on  Hoogh  Straet,  146,  148;  buys 
old  bark  mill,  158;  house  on  river  shore, 
225;  his  early  life,  236;  his  name,  237; 
marriage  at  Amsterdam,  237;  a  leading 
trader,  238;  affair  of  Nicholas  Koorn, 
238;  his  landed  possessions,  239;  his 
mansion  on  the  East  River,  240:  marries 
Marritje  Janse,  241;  his  familv,  241, 
242;  his  shore  front,  243;  death  of,  244, 
267,  268,  note,  276;  lane  skirting  his 
bouwery,  311,  note;  his  East  River 
bouwery,  330;  business  associations  with 
Isaac  Allerton,  335,  337;  description  of 


I    East  River  bouwery,    339,   342,  343, 
345.    See  Appendix  II. 

Loockermans,  Jacob,  242;  becomes  a  sur- 
geon, and  resident  of  Maryland,  244; 
conveys  his  estate  in  New  York  to  Jacob 
Leisler,  245. 

Loockermans,  Jannetje,  241;  marries  Hans 
Kiersted,  Jr.,  244. 

Loockermans,  Marritje,  241;  marries  Bal- 
thazar Bayard,  244;  246. 

Loper,  Jacob,  Capt.,  marries  Cornelia 
Melyn,  113,  116,  122,  124. 

Loper,  Jacob  (2d)  or  James,  124,  note. 
See  Appendix  II. 

Lourensen,  Jan,  269,  270. 
I  Lourensen,  Pieter,  59. 

I  Lovelace,  Governor,  house  plundered  bv 

the  Dutch,  14;  his  tavern,  188. 
|  Lowry,  John  and  Catharine,  318,  note, 
i  Lubbertsen,  Frederik,  his  house  in  the 
Smits  Vly,  299;  his  Long  Island  land, 
300,  301. ' 
Luersen,  Carsten,  316. 
Luvstei's  Island,  228. 


Maagde  Paetje.  229,  280,  note,  296,  297; 

regulation  of  1641.  298,  310. 
Maiden  Lane.    See  Maagde  Paetje. 
Mans,  Engeltje,  227,  234. 
Mansveld,  the  Buccaneer,  210. 
Mrrius,  Pieter  Jacobsen,  147. 
Markettield  Street,  77. 
Martense,  Lyntje,  wife  of  Adam  Roelant- 

sen,  63. 
Marynsen,  Tys,  295. 

Melyn,  Cornelia,  daughter  of  Cornelis, 
marries  Capt.  Jacob  Loper,  113;  marries 
for  her  second  husband  Jacob  Schellin- 
ger,  122;  her  son  Abraham  Schellinger, 
159.    See  Appendix  II. 

Melyn,  Cornelis,  of  Antwerp,  94  et  seq.  ; 
receives  grant  of  Staten  Island,  96;  his 
colony,  98;  at  the  head  of  the  Commit- 
tee of  Twelve  at  New  Amsterdam,  100 ; 
petitions  for  popular  representation  in 
government  affairs,  101;  colony  on 
Staten  Island  devastated  by  the  Indians 
in  1643,  104;  his  grant  of  land  in  New 
Amsterdam,  and  house,  106  ;  memorial 
of  "The  Eight  Men,"  to  West  India 
Co.,  105;  supposed  to  be  author  of 
memorial  of  1644  denouncing  Kieft, 
106;  his  annoyances  by  Kieft,  107; 
brings  charges  against  Kieft,  110;  pro- 
secuted by  Kieft,  fined  and  banished, 
111 ;  sails  for  Europe  in  the  "  Princess," 
and  escapes  from  the  wreck,  113;  ap- 
peals to  States-General,  114;  serves 
mandamus  of  the  States-General  on 
Stuyvesant,  116;  joins  in  the  "  Ver- 
toogh,"  or  "  Remonstrance  "  of  Van  der 
Donck,  and  returns  to  the  Netherlands, 
116;  his  association  with  the  Baron  van 
der  Capellen,  118;  his  residence  on 
Staten  Island.  120;  imprisoned  in  New 
Amsterdam,  121;  made  captive  by  the 


362 


INDEX 


Indians  and  plantation  on  Staten  Island 
again  destroyed,  121 ;  takes  oath  of  alle- 
giance to  the  English  at  Mew  Haven, 
122;  surrenders  patroonship  of  Staten 
Island,  122;  suit  against  Claessen,  125. 
See  127,  128,  transactions  with  Richard 
Smith,  220,  note;  his  house,  etc.,  See 
Appendix  I.,  II. 

Melyn,  Isaac,  124.    See  Appendix  II. 

Melyn,  Jacob,  son  of  Cornells,  122,  124 , 
159.    See  Appendix  II. 

Melyn,  Jannetje,  wife  of  Cornelis,  116,  122, 
124.    See  Appendix  II. 

Mespat  Kill,  168,  228. 

Meyer.    See  De  Meyer. 

Michaelis,  Jonas,  Dominie,  156  et  seq. 

Michielsen,  Gerloff,  295. 

Milborne,  Jacob,  execution  for  treason,  247. 

Mill  Lane.  See  Slyck  Steegh,  153,  173, 
233,  note. 

M  it  ford,  Anna,  wife  of  Thomas  Hall,  327, 
328. 

Mulemaecker,  Francois,  155. 

Moll,  Abraham  Lambertsen,  305. 

Moll,  Lambert  Huybertsen,  319  et  seq.; 
his  Long  Island  lands,  320,  note. 

Montague,  Johannes  de  la,  40,  187,  315. 

Montanus  View  of  New  Amsterdam,  Ap- 
pendix I. 

Moore,  Anthony,  298. 

Moore,  Thomas",  42. 

Moore,  William,  killing  of,  255,  256,  note. 
Morgan,  Henry,  210. 


Nagel    farmhouse    and  burial-ground 

King's  Bridge,  163. 
Nagel,  Jan,  162. 

Nagel,  Jeuriaen  Jansen,  163,  note. 
Nassau  Street.    See  Fulton  Street. 
Negro  slaves  at  N.  Amsterdam,  9,  42. 
Nevius,  Johannes,  48,  177,  note. 
Newton,  Henry,  198. 
Newtown,  Doughty 's  patent  of,  219. 
Newtown  Creek.    See  Mespat  Kill. 
Nicholson,  Lieut.-Governor,  240,  250. 
"  Nine  Men,"  the,  76,  243,  287. 
Noering,  Jan  Willemsen,  171. 
Normans  Kill,  169,  323. 
Norwood,  Benjamin  and  Cornelia,  318, 
note. 

Nutten  or  Governor's  Island,  5,  152. 


Old  Kill,  the,  338,  341. 

Oort,  John,  250,  251. 

Oort,  Sarah.    See  Bradley,  Sarah. 

Opdyke,  Gysbert,  180. 

Orange  Street.    See  Cliff  Street. 

"  Orchard,"  the,  318. 

Oude  Kerk,  or  Old  Church,  Amsterdam, 
156. 

"Outhoek,"  the,  268,  271. 


Pack  Huys.   See  Storehouse  of  the  West 
India  Co. 


Paine,  John,  Capt.,  291. 

Palisades  of  1653,  the,  272,  et  seq. 

Park  Bow,  its  origin,  4. 

Parsonage  of  Dutch  Church,  16,  59. 

Paterson,  William,  appearance  in  New 
York,  196;  his  houses  in  New  York,  197, 
note;  didiculties  with  the  mayor  and 
aldermen,  197;  sued  bv  the  court  mar- 
shal, 198;  expedition  "to  Albany,  199; 
affray  with  Captain  Baker,  199  to  203; 
attempt  to  burn  his  house  in  New  York, 
202;  award  in  his  favor  against  Baker, 
203;  returns  to  Scotland,  203;  property 
contiscated  by  Gov.  Colve,  204;  executes 
releases,  205";  early  life  of  William  Pat- 
erson founder  of  the  Bank  of  England, 
205  et  seq. ;  alleged  statement  of  age  in 
his  will,  207;  his  financial  theories,  208; 
his  visit  to  the  West  Indies,  209;  suffers 
in  the  persecution  of  the  Scottish  Pres- 
byterians, 212  ;  comparison  of  signatures, 
215;  visits  New  York,  218,  note. 

Paulussen,  Mighiel,  147. 

Pavonia,  Massacre  of  Indians  at,  23. 

Pearl  Street.    See  't  Water. 

Peartree,  William.    See  Bartre. 

Peck  Slip,  335. 

Peeck,  Jan,  301,  302,  345. 

Peeck,  Mary,  banished  from  New  Amster- 
dam, 301,  302. 

Penoyer,  Robert,  294. 

Petersen,  Lourens,  150. 

Phillipse,  Frederic,  12,  note,  78. 

Picet.    See  Picquet. 

Picquet,  Michiel,  83,  90;  put  to  the  torture, 

91  et  seq. 
Pietersen,  Abraham,  miller,  346. 
Pietersen,  Adolph,  127. 
Pietersen,  Albert,  150. 
Pietersen,  Cornelis,  300. 
Pietersen,  Gillis,  221,  230,  277. 
Pietersen,   Hendrick    van  Hasselt,  330, 

341. 

Pietersen,  Jan  van  Amsterdam,  83. 

Pietersen,  Willem.    See  De  Groot. 

Pieters,  Solomon,  86,  note. 

Pine  Street.    See  Tienhoven  Street. 

Pollet,  Marie,  wife  of  Philip  Geraerdy,  8; 
marries  Mathew  de  Vos,  12. 

Pos,  Adriaen,  Capt.,  122. 

Pos,  Simon  Dircksen,  lost  on  the  "Prin- 
cess," 27. 

Potter,  Cornelis  de,  48. 

Potter,  Elizabeth  de,  49. 

Prague,  city  of,  and  the  Thirty  Years  War, 
281  et  seq. 

"Princess,"   ship,  27;  wrecked  on  the 

coast  of  Wales,  28,  113,  114. 
Prinsen  Straet,  73,  150. 
Providence,  Island  of,  210. 
Provoost,  David,  338,  339. 
Puddington,  Elias,  320. 


"  Quedagh,"  merchant,  capture  of,  257, 

265. 

Quick,  William,  327. 


INDEX 


363 


Rappalje,  Joris,  147,  307,  note. 
Reddinhaus,  Eben,  104,  105,  107. 
Reynhoutsen,  Kevuhout,  240. 
Rider's  Alley,  311. 
Robinson,  John,  248. 

Roelantsen,  Adam,  schoolmaster,  61  et  seq. ; 

visits  the  Netherlands,  63;  banishment, 

64;  is  provoost  or  jailer,  65. 
Roeloffse,  Sara,  daughter  of  Annetje  Janse, 

marriage  to  Dr.  Kiersted,  46,  59. 
Root,  Simon,  187. 

Rou,  Louis,  Rev.,  grant  of  escheated  land 

to  him,  160,  note. 
Rousby,  Christopher,  266. 
Rousby,  Sarah.    See  Bradley,  Sarah. 
Rust,  Clacs  Jansen,  66. 
Ruvter,  Claes  de,  167,  168,  169. 
Rycken,  Abraham,  83,  150. 
Rycken,  Hendrick,  316. 


Samsens,  Geertruyd,  170. 

Schaapen  Weide,  or  Sheep  Pasture,  4, 
note.  See  also  "  Common  Pasture,"  150, 
151,  152,  271,  note. 

Schabanck,  Pieter,  86. 

Scheerenborgh,  Tryntje,  277. 

Sehellinger,  Abraham,  159.    Appendix  II. 

Schellinger,  Jacob,  marries  Cornelia  MeLyn, 
122.    See  123,  Appendix  II. 

Schenectadv  massacre,  Glenn  mansion, 
etc.,  304,"305. 

Schoorsteenveger.    See  Andriessen,  Pieter. 

Schreyers  Hoek,  19,  73,  109;  general  gath- 
ering of  Indians  and  treaty  at,  162,  note. 

Schrick,  Pauhis,  71. 

Schutt,  Cornelis,  47. 

Sebrah,  Clement,  158,  note. 

Sebring,  Cornelis,  301,  note. 

Seutter  view  of  New  Amsterdam,  244, 
note,  280,  286. 

Shirt  Case,  the,  182. 

Shoemakers'  Pasture,  the,  316. 

"  Shrovetide  Dinner,"  the,  102. 

Simonse,  Hendrickje,  158. 

Slangh,  Jacob,  killed  in  the  fort,  294. 

Slaughter  Houses,  the,  275. 

Sloat  Lane.    See  Sloot. 

Sloot,  and  Sloot  Lane,  241,  243. 

Slot,  Jan  Jansen,  291. 

Sloughter,  Governor,  246. 

Slvck  Steegh,  the,  151;  in  Amsterdam, 
153;  called  Dirty  Lane,  154,  155,  158, 
160,  note,  173/233,  note,  271,  note, 
285. 

Smedes,  Jan,  233,  note,  316. 

Smeeman,  Harman,  314,  note. 

Smith,  James,  69. 

Smith,  Richard,  218  et  seq. 

Smith.  Richard,  junior,  220. 

Smith's  Island,  219. 

Smith  Street,  153.  233,  285. 

Smith,  William  Peartree,  270,  note. 

Smits  Vly,  small  gate  in  palisades  at,  274; 

description  of,  279,  299,  306,  325. 
South  William  Street.    -See  Slvck  Steegh. 
Stadt  Uuvs,  88,  126,  129.    See  also  Stadts 


Herbergh;  meeting  of  delegates  at,  183; 
municipal  government  installed  at,  184; 
granted  to  city,  185;  shore  front  im- 
proved, 185;  views  of,  186;  dinner  to 
Stuyvesant  at,  186;  used  for  storage 
purposes,  187;  desired  for  school,  187; 
courts  in,  188;  building  becomes  dilap- 
idated and  is  sold,  189. 

Stadt  Huvs  Lane,  176. 

Stadts  Herbergh,  88,  104;  of  Amsterdam, 
176;  of  New  Amsterdam,  176  et  seq. 
See  also  Stadt  Huys;  dimensions,  garden, 
etc.,  177;  first  landlord,  historic  inci- 
dents, etc.,  178 ;  used  as  place  of  deten- 
tion, 178;  festivities  at,  180;  affrays  at, 
181;  courts  held  at,  182.    See  187. 

Staten  Island,  grant  to  Cornelis  Melyn, 
96;  Baron  Van  der  Capellens  interest 
in,  118;  devastated  bv  the  Indians  in 
1643,  104;  again  in  1655,  127;  Melyn 
surrenders  patroonship,  122. 

States-General  of  the  Netherlands,  Melyn 
and  Kuyter  before,  114;  charges  against 
the  West  India  Company  before,  119, 
note. 

Steendam,  Jacob,  the  poet,  128  et  seq. ; 
birthplace  of,  131;  in  service  of  West 
India  Company.  132;  his  poems,  "Den 
Distelvink,"  132;  life  in  Africa,  136; 
arrives  at  New  Amsterdam,  136;  poems 
on  New  Netherland,  137;  leaves  for 
Holland,  141;  his  life  at  Batavia,  142. 

Stevensen,  Jan,  schoolmaster,  63. 

Stevensen,  Joris  de  Caper,  167,  168. 

Stevenson,  Thomas,  345. 

St.  George  Tavern,  304. 

Stille,  Cornelis  Jacobsen.  See  Jacobsen, 
Cornelis. 

Stilman,  Jan  Hendricksen,  called  "Koopal," 
221,  324. 

Stilwell,  Nicholas,  326. 

St.  Obin,  Jan  Jansen  van,  41  et  seq. 

Stone  Street.  See  Brouwer  Straet,  and 
Hoogh  Straet:  small  house  on,  90,  note. 

Storehouse  of  West  India  Company,  18, 
45;  new  storehouse,  52 ;  Oloff  van  Cort- 
landt  is  keeper,  76.    See  Appendix  I. 

Stoutenburgh,  Pieter,  57. 

Straetmaker,  Dirck,  and  wife,  killed  by 
Indians,  193. 

Stuyvesant,  Petrus,  Director-General,  house 
on  Schreyers  Hoek,  20,  42,  47,  50;  in 
awe  of  Captain  Van  der  Grift,  51;  his 
unpopularity,  74;  grant  of  the  "Great 
Bouwery,"  83,  note,  85,  91;  his  hypoc- 
risy on  trial  of  Picquet,  92;  arrival  at 
New  Amsterdam,  109;  hatred  of  Melyn 
and  Kiu'ter,  110;  fines  and  banishes 
Melyn  and  Kuyter,  111;  his  judgments 
suspended  by  "the  States-General,  116; 
sends  Secretary  Van  Tienhoven  to  the 
Netherlands,  116;  purchases  the  "  Great 
Bouwery,"  119,  note;  confiscates  the 
ship  "  Fortune,"  and  Melyn' s  propertv  in 
New  Amsterdam,  120,  125,  148,  169";  at 
the  meeting  of  delegates.  183;  dinner  to, 
at  Stadt  Huys,  186;  194,  242,244,  286, 


364 


INDEX 


287;  his  deputation  to  the  Governor  of 

Maryland,  288. 
Stymetz,  Caspar,  14. 
Sunswick  Creek,  165. 
"Swamp,  The,"  325,  331,  337,  338,  339, 

340. 

Swits.  Claes  Cornelissen,  69  ;  murder  of 

by  Indians,  98. 
Syboutsen,  Harck,  314,  note. 
Synagogue  of  Jews,  87,  note,  160. 

"Tabasco,"  Spanish  ship,  affair  of,  70. 

Tan  pits,  the,  316. 

Taylor,  William,  203,  note. 

Ten  Eyck,  Coenrad,  316. 

Teunissen,  Aert,  126,  note. 

Teunissen,  Gysbert,  104. 

Teunissen,  Roeloff,  Captain,  323,  324. 

Teunissen,  Seger,  107. 

Theobalds,  John,  249,  note. 

Thirty  Years'  War,  the,  its  part  in  the 
colonization  of  New  Netherland,  225. 

Tienhoven  Street,  285,  note. 

Tomassen,  Willem,  or  "  Ielmer,"  Captain, 
66  et  seq.,  340. 

Trinity  Church,  272,  273,  274. 

Trinity  Church  Yard,  107. 

Tuder,  John,  250. 

Tuvn  Straet,  151. 

"Twelve  Men,"  the,  100. 

Tymense,  Elsie,  242;  marries  Pieter  Cor- 
nelissen Vanderveen,  242;  marries  Jacob 
Leisler,  242.    See  Leisler,  Elsie,  276. 

Tysen,  Jacob,  65. 

Tvssens,  Lvsbet,  wife  of  Maryn  Adriaen- 
*sen,  291, "294,  295. 


Uxderhill,  John,  Captain,  180. 


Van  Borsum,  Cornelis,  149. 

Van  Borsum,  Eghbert,  115;  his  house  at 
the  Ferry,  342,  343. 

Van  Brugge,  Carel,  151.  See  also  Bridges, 
Charles. 

Van  Brugh,  Johannes,  149. 

Van  Commel,  Teunis  Jausen,  168,  169. 

Van  Cortlandt,  Catharine,  her  church  at 
Sleepy  Hollow,  78. 

Van  Cortlandt,  Oloff  Stevensen.  suit 
against  Dominie  Bogardus  for  slander, 
2(5  ;  57,  64;  comes  to  New  Amsterdam 
75  et  seq. ;  marries  Anneken  Loocker- 
mans,  76;  his  brewery,  77;  burgo- 
master of  the  citv,  78;  his  family,  79; 
89,  149,  237. 

Van  Cortlandt,  Stephanus,  246. 

Van  Couwenhoven,  Gerrit  Wolphertsen, 
144,  145. 

Van  Couwenhoven,  Jacob  Wolphertsen, 
buys  old  church,  59;   his  family,  144, 
et  seq.;  his  speculations,  146;  his  brew- I 
ery,  147;  pecuniary  embarrassments,  148. 
1 49,  151 ;  his  stone  house  on  Hoogh  Straet,  | 
170. 

Van  Couwenhoyen,  Pieter  Wolphertsen,  1 


his  houses  on  Stone  Street,  79 :  family, 
144:  148. 

Van  Couwenhoyen,  Wolphert  Gerritsen, 

144,  145,  note. 
Van  Curler,  Arent,  269. 
Vander  Bogaerdt,  Harmanus  Meyndertsen, 

surgeon  of  West  India  Co.,  11,  68,  et 

seq.;  tragical  death  of,  71. 
Vander  Capellen,   Henryk,  enters  into 

partnership  with  Cornelis  Melyn,  118; 

sues  the  West  India  Company  for  seiz- 
ure of  his  ship,  120,  178. 
Vanderclyff,  Dirck  Jansen,  317. 
Vanderclyff,  Geesje,  317,  318. 
Vanderclyffs  Street.    See  Cliff  Street. 
Vander  Donck,  Adriaen,  his  "  Vertoogh  " 

or  "  Remonstrance,"  to  the  States-Gen- 
eral, 51,  116,  287. 
Vander  Donck,  View  of  New  Amsterdam, 

50,  note.    Appendix  I. 
Vander  Grift.  Jacob  Leer.dertsen,  50,  300. 
Vander  Grift,  Paulus  Leendertsen,  47;  his 

warehouse,  50  et  seq.,  54.  337. 
Vanderveen,  Pieter  Cornelissen,  242. 
Vandervin,  Hendrick  Jansen,  121. 
Vanderwel,    Lourens    Cornelissen.  See 

Cornelissen,  Lourens. 
Vandewater,  Hendrick,  149,  305. 
Van  Dyke,  Hendrick,  assault  on,  11  ;  his 

festivities  at  the  Tavern,  65  ;  171. 
Van  Geele,  Maximilian,  14. 
Van  Hardenbergh,  Arnoldus,  79. 
Van  Hardenbergh,  Johannes.  80. 
Van  Hohoken,  Harmanus,  187. 
Van  Holsteyn,  Nicholas.   See  De  Meyer. 
Van  Hoorn,  Jan  Cornelissen,  141. 
Van  Imbroeck,  Gysbert,  86. 
Van  Neck,  Lambert  Aelberts,  200,  note. 
Van  Ruyven,  Cornelis,  32,  note,  137. 
Van  Steenwyck,  Abraham  Jacobsen,  46. 
Van  Steenwyck,  Cornelis  Jacobsen,  46  et 

seq. ;  burgo'master  and  mavor,  48,  49, 198, 

203. 

Van  Tienhoven,  Aefje,  marries  Pieter 
Stoutenburgh,  57. 

Van  Tienhoven,  Cornelis,  Secretary,  his 
character,  55;  his  residence,  57.  See  77; 
leads  expedition  against  Raritan  Indians, 
97;  at  the  "  Shrove-tide  Dinner,"  103; 
sent  by  Stuyvesant  to  the  Netherlands, 
116 ;  his  defiance  of  the  States-General, 
119,  note;  his  land  on  Hoogh  Straet,  128; 
on  the  sheep  pasture,  151;  grudges 
against  Augustvn  Heermans,  287,  293, 
298;  his  land  in  Smits  Vly,  306;  marries 
Rachel  Vinje,  307;  house  on  East  River 
Shore,  308;  his  bouwery  of  "  Wallen- 
stein,"  and  lane,  309  et  seq.;  his  patro- 
nvmic.  313,  note ;  leases  his  bouwerv, 
314,  315;  sale  of  the  bouwery,  316.  See 
319,  339. 

Van  Tienhoven,  Jannetje,  daughter  of  the 
Secretary,  57,  58. 

Van  Tienhoven,  Lucas,  57.  58. 

Van  Tienhoven's  Lane,  310  et  seq.;  regu- 
lated in  1642,  311,  note,  271,  note,  330. 

Van  Twiller,  Wouter,  Director-General, 


INDEX 


365 


his  landed  interests,  76.   See  236,  275; 

tobacco  plantations,  327. 
Varrevanger,  Jacob,  57,  128. 
Verbrugge,  Gillis,  237. 
Verdon,  Magdalena,  24. 
Verlett,    Janneken,    marries  Augustyn 

Heermans,  285. 
Verlett,  Nicholaes,  285. 
Verplanck,    Abraham    Isaacsen,   at  the 

"Shrove-tide  Dinner,"  103.    See  319, 

324. 

Versche  Water.    See  Kolck,  338,  346. 

Views  of  New  Amsterdam.  See  under 
Hartgers,  Danckers,  Danker  and  Sluy- 
ter,  Visscher,  Vander  Donck,  Allaerdt, 
Seutter,  Montanus,  etc. 

Vincent,  Adriaen,  150. 

Vinje,  Jan,  his  brewery  on  the  Maagde 
Paetje,  298;  on  the  East  River,  306;  sup- 
posed to  be  the  tirst  born  in  New  Neth- 
erland  of  European  parentage,  306,  307, 
308. 

Vinje,  Rachel,  marries  Secretary  Van 
Tienhoven,  57,  307. 

Vinje,  Willem  (or  Vigne),  306;  his  chil- 
dren, 307,  322,  324. 

Visscher  View  of  New  Amsterdam,  49, 
note,  59,  288,  note. 

Vogelsang,  Marcus  Hendricksen,  232. 

Volckertsen,  Cornelis,  322.   See  301,  note. 

Volckertsen,  Dirck,  162,  240,  267,  268, 
notes;  his  house  near  the  ferry,  319,  321; 
one  of  the  earliest  settlers,  322;  marries 
Christina  Vinje,  322;  his  lands  at  the 
Normans  Kill,  323. 


Waal,  or  sheet-piling  along  river,  126, 
278. 

Waldron,  Resolved,  43,  163 ;  sent  on  depu- 
tation to  Maryland,  288. 

41  Wallenstein,"  bouwerv  of,  312,  et  seq., 
316. 

Wallenstein,  Count,  283. 


Wall  Street.    See  Palisades  of  1653. 

Wansaer,  Jan,  41. 

Water,  't,  45  et  seq. 

Water  Poort,  the,  273,  274. 

Webb,  James,  his  tavern,  304. 

Weigh  House,  the,  73. 

Wessells,  Jochem,  of  Albany,  199. 

Wessells,  Warner,  29. 

Westchester  Colonists,  their  arrest,  179. 

West  India  Company,  its  records,  1 ;  its 
bouwerys,  3  ;  workshops,  5,  31 ;  garrison, 
10;  storehouse,  18,  52;  its  colonial  offi- 
cers, 21;  brewery  of,  34;  Pack  Huys  or 
Custom  House,  52;  the  great  bouwery 
of,  83,  note;  memorial  of  the  "eight 
men"  to,  105;  malignant  feeling  of  di- 
rectors towards  Cornelis  Melyn, 114. note; 
attacked  by  the  ''Remonstrance"  of 
Van  der  Donck,  116 ;  answer  before  the 
States-General,  117;  sued  by  Baron  Van 
der  Capellen  for  Stuvvesant's  acts,  120; 
builds  City  Tavern,  "176;  barn  of,  182; 
grant  of  municipal  government,  184; 
hires  Van  Tienhoven's  garden,  310. 

White  Hall,  the,  20. 

Whitehall  Street,  Appendix  I. 

White  Horse  Tavern,  7  et  seq. ;  affrav  at, 
11,  61. 

Willemsen,  Hendrick,  baker,  93,  317. 

Willemsen,  Rvnier,  126,  note. 

William  Street.    See  Smith  Street,  233. 

Willet,  Thomas,  at  Dominie  Bogardus's 
party,  180;  his  grant  next  the  Great 
Tavern,  192;  marries  Sarah  Cornell,  193. 

Willet,  Thomas  (2d),  195. 

Willet,  Captain  Thomas,  51,  192,  305. 

Willet,  William,  195. 

Winckel  Straet,  13  et  seq.;  closed  in  1680, 
32,  72. 

Windmill  on  Nutten  Island,  5;  near  the 

fort.  7.    See  155,  note. 
Withart,  Johannes,  174. 
Wolphert  Gerritsen's  Vlv,  338,  341,  346. 
Woolsey,  George,  195,  196,  335,  336,  337. 


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